Death Game?
by Tigersight
Summary: Sword Art Online, as played by -probably- the most unfortunate players- the ones who missed the tutorial. (Fits entirely within Canon. Short Chapters, updated incredibly regularly.)
1. Chapter 1

**Oh the Irony**** Chapter 1**

Author's note:

This story will follow the light novels more than the anime.

I don't understand Japan's err, geography(?) at all, so I'm sure this first part is going to be god-awfully inaccurate. I blame it all on Google earth!

Also, I'm using the symbols that they used in the translation I read and sort of mimicking the writing style. Not sure if there are a lot of translations, but if anyone's read the novel at the same place as me, I hope you like the touch it adds. Err, so yeah. That's all I can think to say... On with the Story!

Oh yeah! I own nothing!

I pushed harder against my bike's pedals, hoping to draw just a little more speed out of my bike. I was currently heading south along the train tracks between Sakura and Saitama, in the Saitama prefecture. I swung left, headed toward the heart of the city. I was on my way home from a friend's house. He'd called me a little while earlier, saying that he couldn't put together his new «Nerve Gear».

The new device was used for playing the brand new VRMMO game, the only one of it's kind: «Sword Art Online». He'd called me around 12:30, saying he couldn't get it set up and he needed my help. The launch would be at 1:00pm and he was really worried because he wanted to be there at launch, he'd waited in line for two days just to get a copy of the game.

Well why didn't you set it up earlier? If I come help you, I won't get to play when the game opens—

Is what I wanted to say. Of course, I couldn't just ignore his request, he was an avid gamer, some even considered him an addict. He'd applied for the beta, but hadn't been picked. It was thanks to his tip-off that I went to a lottery with my sister. The grand prize was two copies of «Sword Art Online», and of course we won. Wait, that sounds strange, doesn't it? Most people don't expect to win any lottery they go to. That's the thing about my sister, she always wins. Every time. I swear.

So anyway, we have two copies at home, and we were going to play as soon as the game launched, but he called me and I couldn't let him down because if not for him, we wouldn't have the game ourselves. So, I'd gone to help him.

The thing is, I'm good with electronics. It was a breeze to set it up. The problem was, he lived clear across Saitama from me, so it took almost an hour to get there on my bike. I really pushed it and got there in a half our, just a few minutes to spare before the service started. After collapsing at his doorstep, I made my way to his room and swiftly put the machine together while he watched in wonder.

Though I say "swift," it actually took some time to put together. While I did it quickly, there were a lot of parts, and I also had to fix what he'd done wrong previously.

Because of that, it wasn't until 1:15 that I finished construction and he quickly said to me, "Thanks so much, Rikito-san! I'll see you in world!" I waited through the calibration test he did, since I wasn't sure how to do it myself and it would help me go through faster once I had to do it at home. Once finished, he laid down without another word to me. «Link Start!» He said those words with the Nerve Gear on and I swear I felt his soul leave the room then.

I'd scratched the back of my head then and muttered, "You could've at least seen me to the door first." 2:00. That's when I finally got back on my bike and pedaled toward home. Keiko was going to be really mad...

I'd been going for five minutes when I turned away from the train tracks and started my journey through the center of the city. As these thoughts went through my mind, I was distracted by the sound of a siren. I blinked and glanced around. Then I realized it was coming up on my right. Around a tight corner, an ambulance flew out from a blind spot and I had to slam on my brakes and turn my whole bike sideways to stop before it ran me down.

"Be more careful! It would be terrible for an ambulance to run someone over!" I shouted after it. "Jeez." I put my foot back to the pedal and kicked hard. The pedal spun with no resistance. "Huh?" I looked down to see the chain of my bike lying on the ground, snapped in two places. "Aaahh!" I shouted. "How am I going to get home now!?"

After a minute of panic, I got off the seat and started walking. I'd forgotten to bring my phone in my rush to get going, so Keiko was going to be furious when I finally got home. I figured I had about a three hour walk ahead of me. "Why do these things always happen..." I wondered aloud. Oh yeah, that was the other thing. I had the most _God-awful_ luck. While Keiko could win any lottery she played, it was hopeless for me. Once, when I tried, I tripped, knocked everything over, and had to pay for the new equipment.

I continued on my way home, pushing my bike beside me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Oh the Irony**** Chapter 2**

"I'm home!" I called as I entered my house.

"Finally!" The shout came from the girl who stormed around the corner from the kitchen. 5:00. That's when I finally got home.

"Sorry, my bike broke on the way back..."

"Well, I figured that much already," she huffed. "I would have found you when I walked around to see if you got ran over, so I already knew your bike broke," she wagged her finger at me.

"..." I flapped my mouth open and shut, but couldn't find what to say. Realistically, the chance of finding someone by walking around randomly was pretty much non-existent. But this was Keiko I was talking to. She definitely would have found me, no question about it. "Anyway, let's get start playing, it's already late enough.

She glared at me and I gulped. "We can't do that because it's time for dinner."

"Oh, that's right..." Our parents were both out of town on business, and our older brother was a second year, so he had been off at University since last summer. Sword Art Online was scheduled to start at 1:00 on November 6, 2022. That was now 4 hours ago. "Fine." I grumbled. I didn't really want to miss this cool new chance to play a game that would certainly draw the envy of more than a few of my classmates.

But before that, I needed to eat something. I'd been walking for a little over two hours. I'd walked fast to cut down the time as much as I could— so I was pretty tired. Without further discussion, we quickly prepared some rice, said "itadekimasu," and gulped it all down. It took just a ten minutes. After cleaning up at light speed, going to the bathroom, we both proceeded up the stairs to our room and changed clothes. We protested to our parents that we shouldn't still share a room at fourteen years old, as second-year middle schoolers.

Of course, we knew the reason we didn't have separate rooms was because we just didn't have any more rooms in our house. So, we just accepted it. In reality, it didn't bother us much, as we had always been very close.

Now in our bedclothes, (since we had nothing else to do, we meant to dive into the game until morning. It sounded like playing would be the same as sleeping) we were ready to play. Of course, I had to assemble both Nerve Gears first. They took just ten minutes each, because I had already learned how from the first one. After we went through the calibration, side by side, it was finally time to play.

"«Link Start!»"

5:35, November 6, 2022, we dove into «Sword Art Online».


	3. Chapter 3

**Oh the Irony**** Chapter 3**

Note: the little (1)- number in parentheses indicates a note at the bottom explaining what I mean.

My vision was engulfed in a white for a few moments, then a rainbow of colors flew around me. From far in the distance, something approached at so fast that I cringed, and closed my eyes for a moment. However, it stopped just in front of me. I blinked at it. Some kind of holographic screen. From my minimal understanding of the Nerve Gear, it seemed that in separated your brainwaves from your body, so you would be unable to move. Instead, everything you tried to do, your virtual «Avatar» would do instead. Supposedly, it made everything seem super real. I looked all around, but there was nothing anywhere. Just white, going on infinitely in all directions. How was this realistic?

I looked back at the screen in front of me. It said something about terms and conditions. Next. The screen flickered and showed another huge block of text. Next. Next. Next. Next. I pressed the button repeatedly until the screen vanished.

A new screen appeared before me. It read 『Character name』Rikito Eiji was my name, but I didn't want to name my character after myself. I honestly hadn't thought about it. Ah! I entered the English letters R-E For **R**ikito **E**iji. 『Must be 3 characters or longer』Err... **R**ikito **E**ij**i** "Rei." I hit enter and this screen disappeared as well.

A large puple-ish font appeared in front of me, seeming to float in the air. It was in English and took me a moment to understand.

『Welcome to Sword Art Online』

My vision went black. I tried to blink, but there was nothing. I seemed to be floating in an endless void. Then, color began slipping into the dark place. I felt my feet touch ground. I blinked again, and this time, there was a world outside my eyes.

I stood still for a little while. This was a game? Slowly, I looked from side to side. Everything seemed normal, but, somehow, not. I clenched my fists a few times, shuffled my feet. Yeah, this imaginary body responded to my every thought. I held my hand up to my face, to see that it wasn't mine! I looked down at myself and— "Ack."

I'd skipped through the character creation screen. That meant my character was completely randomized. "I didn't realize that I got to make my character..." I muttered aloud. Too late now. I'd just have to deal with his new... appearance... if it could be called that.

Suddenly, "ONIIIIII-CHAAAAAANNNNN" could be heard from somewhere far away to my right. I turned toward the sound. It didn't sound exactly like Keiko, but it was close enough to tell it was her. I took one step, as if to test that my legs would move like I wanted. I swayed a little bit, trying to get used to my new center of balance. When I felt safe moving faster, I started to jog in the direction of her voice. It came periodically, and I steered through a maze of buildings in her general direction.

I knew I was getting close when— I rounded a corner and there she was. Well, not her, but somehow, her. "Keiko?" I said aloud. Though she sounded similar to her real-life self, I certainly did not.

"O...ni..." she lowered her face with a strange expression. "Chaa—ahahahahahahahahahahah!" She flopped over backward rolling on the ground, laughing until tears rolled down her face.

"It's not that funny, Keiko!" I went red from ear ear to ear and felt my face getting hot— actually hot. That must have been part of this game. It seemed that expressions were overstated. I'd never seen Keiko laugh until she cried before at least. "I was in a rush! I accidentally skipped the character creation screen!" I plead.

Keiko got up and grabbed my hand. "I did too," she smirked. She pulled me to the closest window and we stared at our reflections, next to each other. "Oh." The word slipped through both of our lips at the same time. Characters were randomized if you didn't choose everything yourself. So, I don't know what it was, her good luck or my bad luck— no it was both.

Because we both looked exactly the same.

"Well, that's..." a smile flicked at the edge of her mouth. "Ironic." She was right. It was probably the worst irony I'd ever heard of. The thing is, Keiko and I are twins. Fraternal twins, which is why I'm a boy and she's a girl. However, here we stood, now both girls. In this virtual world, somehow, both skipping character creation, we were given identical avatars. Here, we were not just twins, but identical twins. Really, really, the worst irony ever.

We were about our real life height, just about 152 centimeters(5 feet) tall. We had platinum blond hair, which hung far down to our lower backs. Our faces were completely identical. Perfect, flawless, like dolls, or angels, or, or something magical like that. The face in the mirror was by far, out of this world, the absolute most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Too bad it was my face now. _«Irony»_ I could feel the word hanging in the air around me.

In contrast to our heavenly appearances, we were dressed in... well, rags. We had matching gray-blue shirts with long sleeves and— I gulped. A skirt, I was wearing a skirt. It was the same sort of faded gray, but more green. It had numerous patches all over it. Our shoes matched the rest of our outfits. We looked like angels in peasant clothes.

"Onii-chan, what do we do now?" Keiko asked. I scratched my head again and looked around.

"Hmm, they said this was a fantasy game, so..." I trailed off. What _did_ you do in this kind of game exactly? As I looked around, someone ran past an adjoining road. "Hey, let's follow that guy!" Together, we took off, rounding the corner and following the person. I couldn't get a good look because he was so far away. I could just make out some brownish armor, black hair, and a sword across his back. Somehow, as they ran, we slowly crawled closer, bit by bit.

It was surprising how easy it was to run like this. As far as I could tell, this was the fastest I could possibly move. No matter how hard I tried, Ie would not advance any faster than this pace. And yet, I didn't tire, nor run out of breath. Keiko appeared to be the same, her face showed no signs of fatigue as we sprinted through the city streets.

The thing that made my skin crawl, even as I ran, was the feeling of wind between my thighs. It was not a feeling I was used to. Even when wearing shorts in the summer, they didn't leave enough of my legs exposed to feel like this. It was just so creepy!

After running for some time, we crossed out of the city and into a field. A huge field. My feet seemed to stop on their own. Keiko came to a halt beside me. We gazed out over the beautiful field for some time. We completely forgot about the man we had followed out here. "Onii-chan, it's so pretty..." Keiko mumbled at me. We stared until something new caught our attention. The sound of heavy footsteps pounded toward us.

I turned back to look, noting that everything sounded as realistic as it looked in this game. It truly was an amazing thing. Another young man ran from the darkening city streets. He wasn't really even that good looking, I noticed. Also, wasn't he too young? Did he purposely make his character look so normal? After seeing my own character's agelic looks, even being completely made at random, I thought that everyone would look, well, amazing.

The boy stumbled when he saw us. He was muttering something to himself. He stared at each of us individually, then shook his head, still talking to himself. I tilted my head a bit, what a strange guy. As he approached, he called out. "Y,you, you guys... are you really players?" We both nodded in unison.

His jaw hung open and his eyes went back and forth between us. "I can't believe people like you play MMO's..."

"Well, this is our first time playing a game like this," I responded. He raised his eyebrow, probably at my use of personal pronoun(1), but I didn't care, and continued on. "Could you maybe, teach how to play?"

The question seemed to jolt him from his stupor. "Sorry, no time. Gotta go." Then, he held his hand up in the air. He pressed his forefinger and thumb together and made a swiping motion downward. We stared with wide eyes as he pressed his finger to the floating, transparent screen a few times. With a final press of what must have been buttons we couldn't see, a big map appeared in front of him and hung in the air for a moment until he grabbed it.

The young boy immediately ran past us, off into the field. Off to somewhere on that map of his. Keiko and I held our hands up, pressing our fingers together and swiping downward as he had, repeating the process a few times each until a floating window appeared in front of both of us. I heard a burst of laughter and glanced up to see the too-young player looking back as he ran.

Author's note: I can't believe I just realized this now! If you switch the 'Ri' and 'ki' in the Rikito's names, it becomes Kirito! XD gotta love how I can just totally miss stuff like that. rofl

(1) He used the pronoun 'bokutachi', the masculine form of 'we'


	4. Chapter 4

**Oh the Irony** **Chapter 4**

We stood in the small section of grass that separated the surrounding field from the city for a little while, staring around. The small windows with many various buttons hovered in front of us quietly. Between being unsure of what we were supposed to do in this game, and the sheer beauty of this world, we could only stand and stare. I really should have read the manual, or at least looked the game up online. The extent of my knowledge was this: it's a new kind of game: a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. «VRMMO» for short. Strange that they cut out the RPG part, I guess because they didn't want the acronym to be too long.

Whatever the case, we couldn't just stand here forever. This was a game, so we going to play. Once we figure out how... I turned back to look into the city for a moment. Didn't they say that there were ten-thousand copies of this game? So, why had I seen a total of three people so far? Where were all the rest? "Hey, Keiko, why haven't we seen anyone? There are supposed to be tons of people playing this game, so where is everyone?

"Now that I think about it, that is weird. Maybe everyone already left? Like those other guys we saw? Maybe they logged in late too and had to rush to wherever their friends were." She had given a completely logical answer, so I was inclined to agree.

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure a lot of people couldn't make it right when the service started." I nodded enthusiastically. Just then, I heard more footsteps. This time, when we turned, we saw not a single person, but a group headed toward us. So there were still some people around here after all? They were dressed mostly like us, but had a little more armor.

And they were all guys. I could understand that one. Most gamers were guys, but I'd heard they often picked girl characters in games. However, why would they want to play as a girl when they _were_ their character? It would be awkward and uncomfortable, that I knew for sure as I rubbed my legs together in response to the gust of wind off the field that blew between my legs again. I was going to buy some pants as soon as I figured out how. At least then I wouldn't have to deal with the chills that just kept running up my back.

Like the other guy, they stopped as soon as they saw us. And they approached with the same astonished expressions. When they came moderately close, I raised my hand, sort of timidly. The looks on their faces were freaking me out a bit. "Hi." I said simply. Maybe that would snap them out of it?

Yup, it did the trick. They all picked their jaws up off the ground and snapped to attention. Suddenly looking very nervous. I scanned across them and again was struck by how totally ordinary everyone looked. Were the avatars in this game supposed to look normal? Like regular people? Maybe it was to make everything else in this strange game world more fantasy-like... or something...

Nope, I was so clueless about this kind of thing, I just did not understand at all. Finally, one of them stepped forward, succeeding in dragging me from my futile thoughts.

"Ladies, what are you doing out here? And unarmed? He asked with a very serious expression.

I'M A GUY! — is what I wanted to shout at him, but I didn't. This was a game, a role-playing game. I guess that means you're supposed to act not like yourself, but like your character. Hadn't someone said that one time...? I felt like I'd overheard a classmate talking about a game and he'd said something like that...

I furrowed my eyebrows trying to remember, but Keiko answered, "Well, we aren't really sure what we're doing. How do you play this game?" She asked. "We've never played games before," she added to clarify.

"If that's the case, you should head back into the city," he replied with the same tense tone as before. He must be trying to play the really serious-adventuring-knight-person...guy...or something... My thoughts dragged on into the 'I totally don't get it' region again. Then it occurred to me, there was probably a 'how to play' thing in the city, or something. Or maybe we could just ask all the other players about it? I turned to look at Keiko, who definitely had the same idea. We nodded in agreement. "Thank you..." I trailed off, not knowing his name.

"Heathcliff." He made a small bow.

"Thank you Heathcliff-san. We're..." I stopped for a moment, reminding myself that I shouldn't give my real name to some stranger online. "Rei," I used my character's name while gesturing to myself. "And..." I stopped again. I didn't actually know the name of Keiko's character.

"Rai," she finished for me.

I did a doubletake. "Really, Rai? How did you choose a name like that?" I asked.

She giggled before answering. "I closed my eyes and pressed a few buttons." Heathcliff chuckled and extended his hand. I shook it, then Keiko did as well.

"Well, I'm sure you will both become wonderful adventurers one day." He winked before waving his group ahead. They walked past on either side, their eyes still glued to us long after they passed.

"Hmmmm, well, I guess we should head into the city like he said. It's starting to get dark," I said. "We can figure out how to play this game tonight, then come back tomorrow and head out to, well, play." I smiled and gave Keiko a thumbs up.

"Sounds good. Let's get going." She nodded back and we walked quickly back into the city, street lamps turning on one by one ahead of us.


	5. Chapter 5

**Oh the Irony Chapter 5**

Plodding down the wide city streets, the now-identical twins looked all around at everything. While the field outside town had been beautiful with it's miraculous sunset colors and lush grasslands, the city had a different kind of beauty. It was all stone and brick and and all the shades of brown and gray, combined with the sporadic bursts of bright green from trees planted in the many small squares throughout the area. Together, it made the town almost as amazing as the area outside.

We stopped in the middle of one of these squares, having found a bench, and sat down. Our legs had started getting tired from all the walking. I found it strange that we could feel fatigue playing a game like this. Was it really a good idea to play until they had to get up tomorrow? Did my body actually get rest while playing, as if I was asleep? I considered bringing this up to Keiko, when a group of kids approached us. I said kids, because none looked above the age of twelve, the youngest looking just nine years old. There were seven of them, all grouped close together, and none looking very happy.

"Onee-chan(1), do you know where my mom is?" one boy asked. He seemed about ten years old. Keiko and myself looked to each other, confused by his question.

I quickly whispered, "What are those called, the things that look like people but aren't players?"

"I think they're called, NCP's?"

"Oh," I replied, "then why are they talking to us? Do you think they want something?"

"I'd say so, if he's asking us to find his parents."

"But how would we do that?" I asked.

"Maybe he'll give us a clue?" We nodded and turned back to the little boys.

"So... do you know where you saw them last?" I asked.

"At home..." he answered vaguely, lowering his head.

"Then, do you know where your home is?" Keiko asked before I could. He shook his head.

"Then..." I followed up.

"How about we go look?" Keiko picked up my train of thought. With that we got up off the bench and started walking.

"So, how are we actually going to find them in this huge city?" I asked Keiko in a whisper.

"Well, if they're around here, we'll find them," she answered, completely certain.

"I see... wait, are you sure that'll work? This is a game, you think it'll go as easy as it does in the real world?"

"Well, I can't see why not," was her answer. I had to nod. That's just how she was. She could be certain in her ability to always manage, somehow getting lucky in every situation, because her luck really didn't fail. Ever.

After wandering for a few minutes, we arrived in a more crowded square. There were actually quite a few people around. Keiko turned back to the boys. "I'm sorry, your parent's don't seem to be around here. You should try asking someone else." With some grumbles, the small boys shuffled off. "They're definitely not here, so someone who actually knows how to play these games will have to help them," she said.

"Now, what should we do to learn this game?" I asked. We stood thinking for a minute. While my mind wandered, I repeated the action I'd seen that one guy make earlier. I pressed my two fingers together, and a swipe downward caused the «menu» to appear in the air with a chiming bell sound.

I felt a presence leaning over my shoulder, and when I glanced that way, I saw Keiko leaning over my shoulder with a scary grin on her face. What—

Her hand snaked out and pressed a button on my screen. The next thing that happened will probably be burned into my memory for as long as I live.

My eyes focused on the button under her finger. 『Remove all equipment』

A faint light shot up around me and — all my clothes disappeared! Automatically, before I could suppress the urge, a very, very, _very,_ girly scream escaped my lips. "KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" I squeezed my eyes shut and grabbed for Keiko, but missed, because I had my eyes closed now! My eyes flew open again, to see everyone staring at me, standing in my underwear in the middle of the open square. This time when I grabbed Keiko, she couldn't get away fast enough. I threw my arms around her and held her in front of myself like a shield. "Give me back my clothes!" I was trying not to shout while I already felt myself starting to blush.

"But I don't know how to do that, Neee-chaaannn~"

"Then why did you do that?! This is so embarrassing..."

"Really? But that's not you, just an imaginary person."

"Well, yeah, but it's still me! How would you feel if you had to walk around in your underwear in front of a bunch of people you don't know?" I whined.

"Eh?... Eeeeehh!?" Keiko suddenly went stiff. "W,well, you aren't actually a girl anyway!"

"That just makes it worse!" I shouted back this time. I didn't know how to explain it, but it was like all my pride as a man was trampled over as all of these strangers stared at me with their beady eyes... I shook my head. "Just figure how to fix this!" She thought for a moment before answering.

"Oh, I know! I'll ask the first person we come across," Keiko answered resolutely.

With that, we rushed over to the closest person. I still clutched Keiko, holding her against myself to block some of the staring eyes. The person we approached wore a dark cloak. Paired with the fact that it was entirely nighttime now, I couldn't really see him at all.

"H,hey, she," glaring at my sister, "took off all my clothes and I don't know how to put them back on! Can you help?" I plead in a terrible, aggravating, pathetically weak girl's voice.

"Open the «player» menu. It's the icon of a person. Then hit «equipment» Drag your equipment over onto the human figure in the right hand window." I realized that this voice was a girl's momentarily. But I had more important things on my mind.

I swiped my fingers to open the menu and immediately found the little icon, second from the top. It was a simple silhouette of a person, head and shoulders. I pressed the button and a jingle accompanied the screen changing.

The figure on the right slid sideways and three options appeared next to the now-lit-up icon. Skills, Equipment, and Items. I pressed the second button. Yet another jingle, and a big drop-down menu opened between the three options and the human figure all the way to the right.

There were eight items in the menu. Two «Small Swords», two «cloth shirts», two «old skirts», and two «cloth shoes». A pair of everything? However, the second of each pair-excluding the swords- was grayed out.

Before I could wonder about any of that, I pressed my finger to the first «cloth shirt» and dragged it onto the chest of the figure to the right. A blue light flashed for an instant before my old, ratty, lovely shirt appeared back on my body. Everything else followed within moments and I let out a relieved breath.

"Thank you..." I trailed off when I realized the person who had helped me had already left. "Don't ever do that again." I growled at Keiko over her shoulder. She gave her best 'I'm totally innocent' face. I just kept glaring at her.

(1) In case you don't know for some reason... (I'm guessing you do because you're into anime enough to look up fanfics of new a anime that isn't even out outside of Japan yet, most of which are based off of light novels that _definitely_ are not readily available outside of Japan... anyway, where was I going with this?) Oh yeah. Onii-chan=big brother | Onee-chan=big sister


	6. Chapter 6

**Oh the Irony**** Chapter 6**

Author's Note: Most of the beginning of this is based on the menus from the Anime, since they aren't described that much in the novel. Except for the equip status, which I wrote as on the right, like in the novels. I wonder why they put it on the left in the anime? Although, I had to make some of it up, since there are a few menus they never show anyone actually open in the anime. -_-; Anyway...

"So, let's think about this." I yawned before going on. We had retreated to a bench in a new park. I hadn't wanted to stay back where all of those people had seen me nearly naked, so I'd had to drag Keiko to a new place.

"We have the menu here." Keiko nodded emphatically while I waved my hand to bring it up. "First icon is the main menu." It was denoted with a little gear looking icon. I glanced at the time in the top right corner, hovering just a little above the human picture, which now also showed little blurbs on the side, denoting the clothes I had put back on. 9:00. We had been playing for nearly three hours now. "Between there and the person, we have «Setting» and «Help». Hmm..."

I pressed the help button. Maybe there were instructions in there. A new little window popped up over top of everything else. 『Calling GM』 "Ack!" I hit the cancel button. "Ok, that's more like 'I have a problem, help me' than a tutorial..." Moving on, "Then we have the little person icon under that. From there we get «Skills», «Equipment», and «items». I noticed how all the icons slid upward and the little gear disappeared, cycling down to the bottom.

"It's so musical," Keiko noted. I nodded, I'd thought about it myself, the small chimes or bells that rang out every time I touched something on the menu.

"Third up, there are the two little people." This icon was just like the one above it, a silhouette, but with two people instead of one. This contained «Guild», «Party», and «Friend». "Ok... next is..." the icon looked like two overlapping rectangles. I pressed my finger to it and the same jingle rang out. Weird you would think that it would get annoying when it made the exact same sound every time, but it didn't. Somehow, it just felt like it was supposed to make a sound like that...

I shook my head. The what was with that ringing sound effect? Sometimes I didn't notice it at all, and other times it was all I could focus on. "A,anyway. This one has «Stats», «Skills», and... «Screen Visibility»?"

"Oh! I know! Like that one guy! When he opened his screen, none of the buttons showed on it, it was just kind of blank."

"Ah, I see what you mean. I'm not really sure why that would be important though." Really, why should I care if anyone can see my screen? I shrugged it off and went on to the last icon before it looped back around to the main menu. "Ah, it's just like that other one. It's a little angled rectangle shape with a kind of pointer over it." Keiko leaned in closer to see what I was talking about. Without her realizing it, her nose touched the icon she was trying to look at. The sound of bells made her jolt and her head jerked back, cracking me in the chin.

I fell backward off the bench, landing in a bush behind us with my arms and legs flailing. "Ow ow ow ow that... doesn't actually hurt that much..." Weird, it really didn't hurt very much at all. I could just tell that I'd taken a few hits, but it was nothing that interfere with me, kind of like a sore shoulder, it didn't keep you from doing anything. It just made it unpleasant.

"Hehehe, Onii-chan, you probably shouldn't stay like that," Keiko was giggling at me. "You don't know much about skirts." She stuck her tongue out and I looked up to see my skirt flopped over on my stomach instead of covering my legs.

"Uuwaaa!" I shouted, flailing more and managing to throw myself the rest of the way into the bush. When I crawled back out, Keiko was laughing at me again, doubled over with more tears coming down her face. "It's not funny!" I couldn't keep myself from shouting. My face went all red again and I pulled Keiko off the bench, still laughing, and out of the square that now had all eyes glued to us again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Sleepy...**** Chapter 7**

After walking for a little while longer, both Keiko and myself were dead tired. It really was getting very late. Feeling like we couldn't go another step, we collapsed against the side of a building.

"Uwaaa~ Can you sleep in this game?" Keiko asked aloud, stretching with her back against the wall.

"I don't know, but wouldn't that be weird? Why would you need to sleep in the game while your body is actually sleeping?" Though I said that, I could already feel my eyes beginning to drift closed. It was a bad idea, I had to protect Keiko. There were sure to be some weirdos in this game, and I couldn't take the chance of them doing anything while she slept. "Have... to... to..." I could feel my head roll sideways, a light clunk as our heads met between us.

"Uuuu..." came lightly from next to me as everything started going dark.

"Hey! You guys, it's not that bad. Cheer up some! Come with us, we'll help you out." The voice came from someone who sounded older than me."

"Mu...om...saa..." I moved my mouth but only babbling sounds came out. I just couldn't open my eyes.

"Haha, don't worry, we'll bring you to the inn we're staying at. It'll be much safer there." The next thing I knew, I felt strong arms wrap around me and lift me into the air. I felt my stomach lie against a large back for a while. The up and down motion of footsteps continued for some time. Then, a loud sound erupted ahead. I could see a warm brown color through my closed eyelids, and the chill night air was replaced by hot and humid air all at once.

The next thing I was conscious enough to notice was that arms had pulled me away from the man's back I'd been on. Some grunting, then I plopped down not-so-gently on a much softer surface.

"I need to raise my STR more." Some laughter followed.

"Well, what should we do with them Leader?"

"Just let them sleep for now." I stretched out my arm, unconsciously searching, until I felt soft skin meet mine. Our fingers entwined and I finally slipped away completely.

Author's note: HAHA! I finally thought of something else to put at the beginning! ^_^


	8. Chapter 8

**What's that?**** Chapter 8**

Author's note: Oh yeah, sorry that the chapters are so short. (It only occurred to me to mention this now.) I just like writing them short and fast because it gives me the motivation to keep writing when I can say "Look! Now it's one chapter longer than it was before!" And, well, yeah, it makes me want to write more... But anyway, they may get longer once I actually figure out what I want to happen in this story... Hehehe yeah, about that- I actually have no idea what I'd doing. I'm totally making it up as I go along! XD But anyway, I think this note is too long, *bow bow bow* so I'm just going to go on with the story now...

Light. Brown. Light. Air. Soft. I took a deep breath. A few bits of thought drifted back to me. I realized I had been asleep. My eyes opened to find a room that wasn't my own. So where was I? The roof was made of a series of wooden logs, like a log cabin. Why would I be in a cabin? I didn't have any family who lived in a place like this, did I? It took me a minute to remember. Yeah, definitely no family with a log house.

"Uuuu" I heard a girl's voice. It sounded similar to my sister, but not quite the same. Then I noticed the pressure on my hand. I rolled to the side—

The most beautiful girl I had ever seen was lying next to me, her hand grasping mine gently. From under the disheveled sheets, I could see she was only wearing her underwear. My mind froze, but my body moved on it's own. "KYAAAA!" I flew backward off of the bed but somehow didn't land on the floor. I heard a muffled sound from below me and the most bone chilling feeling ran up my spine. I threw myself sideways and landed flat on top of some guy.

"Uuuwwaaaaaa!" I shouted and whipped my head around. There were a bunch of guys camped out on the floor, with the single girl laying on the bed. As soon as my eyes met the door, I was on my feet. However, when I moved toward it, my center of balance seemed to roll underneath me and I toppled forward, crashing down on top of another guy.

By this point, my screaming and crashing had woken everyone and they all shot their feet. They saw me freaking out and trying to stagger to my feet. They went totally bug-eyed and their jaws dropped. I used the time while they were staring stupidly to stagger to the door, fighting to keep on my feet while my balance just couldn't right itself.

I pushed against the door, but it wouldn't open, so I pushed harder. It still wouldn't budge. I looked down and found the handle. I pulled and the door flew wide open. Because I'd been leaning against it, I fell over backward and landed on my butt. While I was trying to once-again get back to my feet, I heard a strange voice say a very familiar phrase.

"Onii-chan?" I turned back to find the singular girl in the room looking right at me. Onii-chan? Me? But who was this girl? There was no way I knew her. I would never be able to forget a beauty like that. She was rubbing at her eyes lazily. It reminded me of a cat for some reason. "What's wrong?"

It seemed that she finally managed to clear the sleep from her eyes, because she made a strange face, then looked around. "Are—(1)" After a few moments. "EEEEEEEEEEHHHHHH!" She screamed and ran right into me. We fell out into a hallway, all wood like the room.

I felt the floor slip away under me, only to realize I'd fallen onto the top of a staircase. "Aaaaah!" I screamed as I flailed my arms for something to hold onto. Of course, I only had the girl who was now clinging to me. We toppled down two flights of stairs and rolled into the middle of a vast, suddenly very silent room. My vision spun all around from the sudden stop and I couldn't manage to get my feet beneath me again.

I just lay there until everything slowed down, when a guy appeared in my vision. "Hey, you two alright? That was quite a fall back there."

"f,fine," I managed. I tried to sit up, but still had the half-dressed girl curled up on top of me. "H,hey, umm, hey..." What was I supposed to say?

She looked up into my eyes and I drew back. It felt like her gaze shot straight through me. I could already feel my face turning red.

"Hehe," her face suddenly turned sly. "I never knew Onii-chan was like that," she whispered to me.

"Eh?" Onii-chan again?

"Don't you remember? We were playing that game and fell asleep, then those strange guys picked us up," she said to me quietly, somehow ignoring the crowded room of stares all aimed at us.

After a moment, everything came back to me. All at once, I remembered the entire situation. "Eeehhh!?" The whole game and everything. And this beautiful girl was actually my sister's avatar. Sadly, it was identical to my own. As soon as that all clicked, another thing did.

We were standing in the middle of a crowded inn, full of people, almost naked. I immediately wrapped myself around Keiko and said, "Quick, put your clothes back on!" I could actually feel her face get hot from her embarrassment. Her hand flew through the air and a series of melodic bell sounds indicated that she once again clothed. I did the same, my hand flying over the menu even faster than before. I put on all my clothes so fast, they all seemed to appear at the same time.

Time. What time was it? I glanced up into the corner showing the time. 7:00. "Uwaa! We're going to be late for school." I swiped to open the menu again. My hand traced over the various buttons. Most of their functions came to mind now after studying them last night. However, I could not recall having seen the «log out» button. "Hey, where's the log out button? I asked the guy closest to me. He was really tall and had red hair, but looked kind of scary.

"Ahh... here, come this way." He led us back up the stairs to the room from before. He and his small crowd of guys piled into the room, sitting on the floor while Keiko and I sat together on the bed. "Well, first off... We're Sorry!" They all bowed together. "We unequiped your clothes while you slept because it's not comfortable to sleep in them." He bowed again. "We swear, we didn't do anything strange."

Obviously, that was not their entire reason. If I had a beauty like err, myself? Jeez it was weird when I thought of it that way. Anyway, I would have done the same thing. And that is, find a perfectly reasonable excuse to take off their clothes. They had done just that. Because it was uncomfortable to sleep in our clothes, they had made us more comfortable. They just happened to get a good look at these bodies while they were at it.

"Don't worry," I waved my hand dismissively. "I get it, I would have done the same thing." Unfortunately, Keiko seemed to have followed my same line of reasoning and was now staring daggers at me. "Ehh, I mean, umm, what? It's true! It really is a good excuse..." Her glare only grew hotter. "I can't help you with this one." I could feel sweat starting to pour down my face.

"Hehe, thanks anyway," the scary-ish guy said. Well, I guess you forgot." Suddenly he muttered, but I managed to pick up that he said, "I wish I could." He then went on. "Like Kayaba said yesterday at the «tutorial»—"

"Ah, about that," interrupted, "we kind of missed it."

"Eh?" He sat up straighter. "What?"

"Well, my bike broke on my way home, so I didn't get back until late, and we didn't start playing until last night after dinner. So, we must have missed any tutorial that was given at the beginning." I explained in a slightly sheepish tone. No doubt this guy was another crazy gamer who had stood in line for days to get a copy and didn't understand how anything could have kept us from logging in at the beginning.

To my surprise, he was quiet. This went on for a minute. "Why?"

"Why? What do you mean?"

"WHY THE HELL DID YOU LOG IN!?"

(1) Not 'are', the sound 'ah-re,' it's a sound the Japanese use sometimes to show confusion. It's something like 'what' but it fit better that way.


	9. Chapter 9

**Death Game?!**** Chapter 9**

I was taken aback when this stranger started yelling at us. "Well, why not?" I eked out.

"Who would knowingly throw their life away? Especially people as pretty as you!?" He stood back up from his kneeling position. "Why? Why would you do that?" his voice grew more quite.

As if to counter is receding anger, I snapped back, "I don't know what you're talking about! Explain it to us."

Suddenly, something lit up in this man's eyes. "You, you guys said you logged in late at night. What was the time?"

"Ahh, about 5:45 in the evening, why?"

He started mumbling to himself. "They were on the outside. Maybe they know something about it. Maybe they were sent to tell us about the situation..."

"Oi! Answer me already! What are you all so freaked out about?" The scary figure turned back to us with a dark expression. I gulped without realizing it before he began to speak.

"What was it you said? You came home on your bike? Did you see a bunch of ambulances on your way? Like, way, _way_ more than usual?"

"Ehh, now that I think about it, yeah. I almost got ran over by one, which is why my bike broke and I had to walk home. There were a bunch more the rest of the way. I figured there had been some sort of accident. But then I forgot about that when I got home and my sister was yelling at me for being late... Wait, why do you care about what I saw on my way home?" I snapped.

Ignoring me, "Then it really is true..." He turned to Keiko, asking, "And you? I'm assuming you're her sister, so you really didn't notice anything strange all day?"

"What's really true?" I tried cutting in. This man was infuriating. Were all gamers this annoying? Why wouldn't he stop skirting around my question and just answer already?

"Well, no. I used the spare time to finish all my homework and then read a book."

He seemed at a loss for words. For a few minutes. He gulped repeatedly. A few times, he opened his mouth, but shut it again. "I... I really... really... I really..." I was tempted to urge him on, as his halting speech was starting to get on my nerves. "I really don't want to have to be the one that tells you this..." He gulped again.

Then, all in a rush: "This game was a trap for the ten thousand players who logged in so now we're all trapped here with no way to log out or return to the real world and the only way out is to beat the game." He was panting slightly, his eyes unfocused.

It took a minute for what he'd said to finally sink in. I furrowed my eyebrows, not quite getting it, and then—

"NO WAY!" Keiko and I shouted in unison.

The main raised his hand, saying "I swear. I'm not lying. There really is no way out. If there was, I wouldn't be here right now. I have work in an hour. About those ambulances yesterday, they were taking all of us to hospitals. Kayaba said it yesterday, and you just confirmed it. If either of you had turned on a tv, looked at your phone, even a car radio, I'm sure all they were talking about was the «SAO» incident. Or something like that, none of us know anything for sure. We just have to believe because no one has tried taking off our «Nerve Gear» yet.

"Wait, but if they're taking everyone to hospitals, why don't they just take it off?" Keiko asked in a small voice.

"That is, the other thing Kayaba said was that..." he gulped again and pulled at the collar of his shirt. "If anyone tried to take it off, the Nerve Gear will turn into a microwave and fry our brain. And, if we die in here... even once, it'll also fry our brain. Kayaba Akihiko, that bastard turned the first real VRMMO in to a «Death Game». Death here means death in the real world.


	10. Chapter 10

**Crash Course**** Chapter 10**

Author's note: I wonder if I should actually read through these chapters before I post them... -_-;

Death. Real death. It was slowly sinking in. Despite that, I tried to keep my mind moving. "Who's Kayaba Aki... something?"

"Kayaba Akihiko is the creator of «Sword Art Online» and the «Nerve Gear». He's the one who came up with this whole thing. After the service started, he disabled the «Log Out» button in the main menu. Her purposely ensured that was the only way to log out of this game, so when he disabled it, it ensured that we were all trapped. Aincrad has become our prison and our new home. Better get used to it." Somehow, it seemed like he was half talking to himself. As hard as it was on me right now, he was probably still in the same place.

"What's Aincrad?" I asked, just asking about anything I didn't get to keep my mind occupied.

"Seriously? Did you even read the manual?" We shook our heads together. "Have you even played a net game before?" Same response. "Oh man... now I have to help you. I could never forgive myself if I left a pair like you to die in this place. Come on, we're heading out to the field to hunt. I'm going to give you a crash course on MMO's and SAO and everything else you need to know.

With little more discussion, we struck out through the city. The men around us were all armed and armored – if a bit lightly. On the way, he explained the history of Sword Art Online. How the Nerve Gear had been created and everyone always wanted a new type of MMO, or Massively Multiplayer Online [Game]. The Nerve Gear was used to «FullDive», meaning it cut your brain off from all your senses and showed you a whole different world. He explained how «SAO» was the game everyone was looking for. That's why all ten-thousand copies had vanished within minutes of sales opening."

We passed into a brightly lit square with many trees lining the paths heading in each direction. Numerous eaves hung over top of the path. On my left, Keiko looked up and held her hands out. A yellow apple fell into her hand as she walked, then another, and another. I looked to see that an apple hung onto each of the plants winding overhead. Because we were walking at the back of the group, no one else noticed.

"It's going to be tough for you guys, that is, if you want to be adventurers. I'm sure at least half of the population is just going to stay in the «Starting City». And hey, that's probably the most sane option. But, we'll never get out of here if we all just wait."

"Umm, I have a question." Keiko said.

"Go ahead."

"What do I do with all these?" He looked back and his jaw dropped when he saw Keiko's arms full of apples. "Where did you get all that?!" He looked all around, and we both pointed up overhead. He looked at the eaves with their apples. "You picked them? Aren't they a bit high?" He looked at least 180 cm(6 feet) tall, and he reached up as far as he could to just reach an apple. He tugged on it, but it didn't budge. He jumped up and wacked it with the flat of his hand. A little purple screen popped up near the apple, though I couldn't really read it.

"Oh, an immortal object. You know what that means? Those apples can only be collected when they fall on their own. It must be a random occurrence. You sure are lucky," he smiled.

"Yeah, I know that, but what should I do with them?" As she spoke, Keiko reached out right in front of her. The apple he'd been fighting with fell *Plop* into her hand.

After looking mystified for a minute, he answered. "Just open your items menu and put the item into the window. That'll store it in your inventory indefinitely. She nodded and did just that. A new icon appeared on the list, «lucky apple». She then collected the rest of the apples we passed on our way out of the plaza.

"Well, that leaves us all in Aincrad, that is, this whole place is Aincrad. We're only on the first floor. You see up there?" We looked up and though the buildings blocked our view to the sides, we could see a huge, flat surface above us. "Each floor is 100m tall. There are 100 floors in total. And we have to fight our way through every single one before we can all get back to the real world.

"Wow, that sounds hard," I commented.

"Hard doesn't even cover it. In the two months of the beta test, they only made it to the sixth floor."

"What? It's really that hard?" Keiko and I asked at the same time. "You're saying, it could take years to get out of here?" I went on.

"Yeah, Aincrad is now a prison. And we're the prisoners."

"Mmmmm. So, what does it look like? You make it sound like it's not really just a world, but more like, a structure?"

"Yeah, it's a giant floating castle. It was pictured on the front of the game."

"Ah, so that's it." At least I'd looked at the game's cover. We finally passed out of the city and into the plains beyond. It still left everyone awestruck at the beauty of this world, despite the truth of it. "Then, where are we going right now?" I asked once I composed myself.

"We're going to go hunting. We need to start before everyone else who doesn't intend to sit idly by swarms this area and take all the PoPs."

"Pops?" I repeated the unknown word.

"Ah, it means all of the monsters that respawn."

I wasn't sure if I really got it, but I nodded. "Wait, monsters?" Did he say that we could actually die in this game? "Ah! About what you said about dying, how do we know that? Err, I mean, like when we're dying, umm..." I wasn't sure how to explain.

He thought for a minute, "Hmmm, I think what you're trying to ask is, 'how do we actually die?' Right? Just keep an eye on your hp bar don't let it hit zero."

"Hp bar?"

"Eehhhh?! You really haven't played any video games before, have you? It's up here, all the way in the right corner of your vision. It's there all the time. Pay close attention to it, you can consider it an exact gauge of how much lifeforce you have left in you. If it drops too low- yellow orange, or red- run. Hide. Do whatever you can to escape with your life. It would really be a shame for either of you to die here."

"What do you mean by that? You've said that a few times now. What do you mean by 'someone like us'?"

"Aren't you models, or idols, or something like that?"

"Eeeehhh?" I saw Keiko's face go all red.

"No, why would we be?"

"What a waste!" He fell to his knees a little too dramatically, big tears suddenly streaming down his face. "With looks like yours, how could you not be models?"

"Huh? You're talking about our avatars? We look nothing like this in real life..." I let out a small sigh.

"What was that?" he blinked at us a few times. "Those are avatars!?" Their entire group looked like a mix between amazed and horrified.

I was starting to get irritated with this. Less time being amazed by every other thing we did and more explaining why it was amazing. "Just explain already."

"Oh duh, again, you missed the tutorial. That was kind of important, but... it's strange. It's like it sets you two apart from everyone else. I'm sure no one else logged in after, say 3:00. That's probably when they got the news out that it was a trap. So, to log in after the tutorial? Impossible— at least that's what I thought until I met you guys.

"You see, the thing is, during the 'tutorial' as Kayaba called it, he explained that this was a death game, just as I've told you already. Then he said something like, 'to make you really sure that this is your reality, I've given you all a gift'." He made a deep kind of cackly voice when he imitated Kayaba. "He had put this item called «Hand Mirror» in each of our inventories. When we all took it out and looked at it, we all changed from our avatars to how we look in the real world."

"Seriously? That's how you actually look?" He nodded.

"Supposedly, everyone playing «SAO» was gathered in the main plaza then. I bet Kayaba didn't expect anyone to log in after all the media coverage his game got. That pretty much means that you guys are the only players who don't look like your real selves."

I thought for a moment before asking, "So, those «Hand Mirrors» can change us to how we really look?" I pulled up my menu and went into the item menu. Lots of apples, but no mirror. "It's not there..."

"But why would you want to look like your real self? Isn't it better to at least get to look better while you're stuck here?"

"Not really, I'm a guy, this body is really inconvenient."

"Eeh? You chose a girl character?"

"No, I accidentally skipped the character creation."

"Same," Keiko chimed in.

"Man, you have got the most awful luck..."

"I knew that already..." tears streaming down my face.

"Actually, now that I think about it, that's really bad." I raised an eyebrow and he went on. "I heard people discussing whether a player should have the option of changing their character's gender, because supposedly it's bad for your mind to spend long periods of time in a body of the opposite gender."

"Eeeehhh!? Bad for my mind? What's that supposed to mean?" I slid to the ground, "why does this always happen to me..."

"Uwaa, that really is unlucky. And I was glad up to this point because I finally got to be Onii-chan's real twin..." Keiko said quietly from my left.

"Sorry, but I can't do anything to help with that. Let's just go and get to hunting. The more experience we get, the faster we all get out of here."

I nodded stiffly. How was I going to manage being stuck in this body for an indefinite period of time? I might be stuck in here for years, maybe even the rest of my life. As I thought my dismal thoughts, we came over the crest of a hill and the rest of the world unfolded before us. Directly ahead, a long way off in the distance, a coniferous forest. To the left, a desert. And far to the right, I made out hills rising in a bumpy pattern. It was easily several kilometers to any of the three locations. It would take hours to walk that far.

"Aincrad's first floor is 10 km in diameter," our guide said from in front of us. He didn't seem to be speaking to us directly though. Almost like he was just remembering it himself.

"That's an awfully long way to walk..." Keiko muttered. I nodded along.

"Well, for now we're finally at the hunting grounds." He stood for a moment as some expression played across his face. "Hey! I just realized something. We haven't actually introduced ourselves yet!"

"Oh" and "that's right" came from Keiko and I.

"Well, I'm Klein. These are my friends, we were all in the same guild in the last game we played."

"A,ah." I bowed. "Umm, are we supposed to use our real names or character names?"

"Definitely character names, it's considered extremely rude to ask anything about the real lives of players, probably even more so now that it's a situation like this..."

"Well, in that case, I'm Rei. Please take care of us."

Following my lead, Keiko said, "My name is Rai. Please take care of us."

"He, Rei and Rai? And randomly generated twin avatars? You two are just a big ball of strange coincidences aren't you?"

We nodded in unison.


	11. Chapter 11

**Swords ****Chapter 11**

Author's note: It's funny, I had to write a 40,000 word novel for English class once. It took me an entire month. I've written this story up to 11,000 words in 3 days. Huh. And sorry for the slow update. I've been trying (and failing) all day to get my first win of the day in League of Legends. -_-; Maybe I'll have some more luck tomorrow.

As we moved through the grassy field, a few animals came into sight. As we moved closer, we saw that they were big boars. "This guy is a «Frenzy Boar». They're the easiest monsters, so we can kill them without worrying." Klein approached one that stood on its own. "The thing you need to remember: use «Sword Skills»." He unsheathed the sword at his waist and the boar turned to look at him. It let out a high screech sound and rushed forward.

"Watch out!" I called, along with a few others. Unconcerned, Klein lowered sword, holding it out parallel out at waist height. When the boar was about to run him over, he extended his hand and suddenly his body shot forward, a line of red stretching from his sword behind him. He passed the charging animal the line indicated that his sword had gone through the whole side of the boar.

Red shot out of the boar's side, almost like blood, but it was all pixely and vanished in a moment. Then I noticed a strange looking window to the right of the boar. It was curved, with the outside gray like my own menu and the center filled in with green. As I watched, the green in the center shrank, from the side facing away. It stopped about halfway down, the color fading to a yellow. What Klein said earlier came to mind. Green yellow and red. Then that was, the hp bar? The boar's hp bar?

"Ah, so that's what he meant." I glanced up and to the right. Though it was all the way in the corner of my vision, it was somehow easy to focus on my own little green bar. It was filled completely, with my name underneath on the left, and the numbers 300/300 on the left. I'd figured that that was the numeric indication, the exact number of my «life». It was still strange to think of it that way. A number that displayed exactly how close I was to dying. For real.

I shook my head to shake of the thought of dying. Another screech roared out. I looked at the boar as it charged toward Klein again. This time, he held his sword in front of him, holding the flat of the blade with his other hand and caught the boar's muzzle on the blade. As they pushed against each other, Klein made sad grin for a moment. Then, his attention reverted back to the fight.

"Ran, your turn. Hold your sword just like I did. Once it recognizes the correct position, the «System Assist» will kick in and carry you through the sword skill. It's a basic skill called «Horizontal»." Another member stepped forward, holding his sword the same way Klein had. After a little while, he shifted his body and the same red light glowed around his sword blade. He shot forward just as Klein had and slashed through the boar.

I looked again to watch the boar's hp bar drop further. This time, it fell until there was just a little left, and turned red. I nodded to myself. So that's how you played this game... Oh wait, it wasn't really a game anymore, was it? I guess you couldn't call it a game if your survival depended on it.

"Hmmm..." I murmured while thinking. Didn't that mean that fighting monsters like this was just a way of ensuring our survival? Then, who was to say, getting a job and making the money you needed to live wasn't the same. What it came down to was: we were just living life, just as we always had. Only now, the rules were different. Instead of 'make money' it was 'kill monsters'. "But, why kill the monsters? What do we actually get from it?" I wondered aloud.

"Ah, you aren't a gamer, so you don't know about that. When you kill monsters, you gain «Experience». When you accumulate enough, you «Level Up»." He cut off, changing tones. "Ok, now Ebizan. This time, hold our sword the same way, but tilt the angle up toward your shoulder. This is the sword skill «Slant»."

While another man stepped forward to try, Klein continued speaking to me. "Anyway, when you level up, you get stronger. Like... think of it this way. If you were to train at a gym every day, you would get strong and be able to lift more weight. It's kind of like that, but instead of being able to take on heavier weights, you can take on stronger monsters." That's the basics of playing an RPG, you level up to get stronger. Once we get strong enough, we'll all fight against this floor's «Boss». It's a super strong monster that we all work together to beat. It's so strong, no one could possibly take it on by themselves. After we beat him, we can move to the next floor above this one."

I followed his train of thought, continuing, "So we kill monsters to get stronger, to kill stronger monsters, to get stronger, to beat the boss, to go the the next floor."

"And then we kill more monsters until we're strong enough to fight the boss after that. Rinse and repeat until we go through all the floors. Then, we'll finally be free."

"I,it sounds like the script from a bad movie..."

"I'd say that means Kayaba has no imagination, except that can't be, since we're standing in it at the moment." He sighed. Right as he'd finished saying that, the one swordsmen he had called, umm, B... something with a b... Bez... something. I couldn't remember his name, I'd been focusing on Klein's explanation. His sword finally released the glow that indicated he had activated a «Sword Skill». It let out a deep purple light. Just like before, he launched forward and hacked at the boar Klein still held at bay. It looked almost just the same as the others, except for the different light color, and the change in the angle of the cut.

With a final squeal, the boar's hp reduced to zero and it burst into a shower of polygons, which floated upward briefly before vanishing. A small window appeared in front of me titled 『Result』. It listed three things in rows: 『Experience』, 『Col』, and 『Items』. All three had a 0 next to them. "What's Col?" I asked.

"It's the money in this world. You use it to buy everything, just like the real world."

"Ah." It felt like I finally had a grasp on how things worked. For the first time, I felt like I could move ahead, actually knowing what I was doing. I looked around at this group of guys. For them, this was all second nature. They must have all been playing games for a long time, so all this «Experience» and «Sword Skill» stuff had been normal for them even before coming to this world.

As I looked around, they were all practicing activating these skills. Then it occurred to me— they were practicing. That meant they didn't really get it, or at least that they still needed to get better. "So, you're all gamers? How come it seems like you guys aren't really any stronger than me, even though I've never played a game before."

"Haha, that's easy. We all just started playing this game. Everyone starts out at Level 1, at the very bottom. That and, this is the first VRMMO, so none of us have experienced a game like this before. Until now, it was all about pressing keys on a keyboard and moving a mouse in front of our computers. This is the first time we've ever been _inside_ the game. Sadly, that's kind of what allowed Kayaba to trap us here in the first place, not being able to log out in any other game would be a laughing matter. In any other game, we could just get up and walk away." By the end of his speech, Klein's smile had faded and everyone had stopped swinging their swords around.

"Oh... I see..." I looked down, a bit downhearted about all this. If it hadn't been for my terrible luck, I never would have gotten copies of the only death game ever made. And I definitely wouldn't have dragged my little sister down with me.

A big hand patted the top of my head, ruffling my hair. "Hehe, don't worry, we'll make sure to keep you guys safe. If you put your mind to it, I'm sure you can get stronger too." I didn't exactly like being treated like a little kid, but his words did put my mind at ease somewhat.

"Well then, on to the next area!" Klein shouted.

"Oh!" Came from the rest of his group. Keiko and I blinked at each other. "Oh?" We said quietly.

Author's note: Ugh, finally. I've been fighting through writer's block all day. *Points at note at beginning* I swear I wrote that like 5 hours ago. -_-; And this is all I have to show for it. I think I've worked through it now, so hopefully I'll be able to write up the next chapter quickly!


	12. Chapter 12

**Skills?**** Chapter 12**

Though Klein had shouted about the 'next area', he basically just meant a dozen meters away, where more boars stood, grazing like sheep. We all walked over, careful to keep our distance until we actually intended to fight.

"Ok, we'll split into three parties of three. That way, each party can take out a boar with one slash from each of us," he went on to explain, "the thing is, exp is distributed based on how much damage you deal to the mob." I tried to follow, relating these new terms to the ones I'd learned. Exp sounded like a shortened form of experience. I figured mob meant the monsters, since nothing else would really fit. "However, item distribution favors whoever lands the last hit. So, the one who finishes each mob will gain a little less exp, but get more items. A fair trade."

Everyone nodded excitedly. He really was a good leader, coming up with such a plan. It certainly did sound fair for everyone. Luckily, there were nine of us, so his grouping also numbered well— —

"Eehh? You're including us?" I realized, shouting in surprise.

"Of course," he responded. We can't just leave you guys out, you won't get any stronger." That's why you'll be with me!" A big grin spread across his face.

Shouts of "Yeah!" and "That's our leader!" erupted from his men. I just had to smile. Looks like we were about to become adventurers.

"Ready?" I asked Keiko.

"Un," she nodded. We waved our hands to open our menus, and two button presses later, we stared at the «Small Swords» in our inventories. We both dragged them over to equip them. I immediately felt the added weight at my waist. With slow movements, I unsheathed the sword with a metallic hiss. It was small and really, not very impressive looking. Well, Klein had said we start out at the bottom and have to work our way up.

While we were both staring at the seemingly alien weapons in our hands, Klein split everyone else up into hunting parties. "Ok guys, you ready to go?" He asked us while operating his menu. A screen appeared in front of me, indicating that Klein wanted to invite me to his party. A moment later, the same screen popped up in front of Keiko. Together, we pressed the green button, giving our ok.

My eyes were immediately drawn upward. I saw two more bars appear below mine, quickly filling up to full. The two names displayed beneath were Rai, and Klein. "So, Rei, Rai, I'll guess that you haven't set up your skills yet, considering that this is the first time you've drawn your swords. We both nodded together.

"Ok, then I'll explain. In your character menu, the first option is «Skill». That opens up your skill menu. Your skills are really, super important. Next to your level, they're probably the most important things to help keep you alive. You start out with two «Skill Slots» at level 1." He scratched his head, "I'm not too clear on what levels you get more slots at, but you definitely get more slots by leveling up. The more skills you get, the better. And: your skills level up separately from your character level. The more you use them, the more they level up."

I was staring intensely, trying to understand again as he started spouting more terms at us. I thought I got the gist of it, so I nodded. He went on to inform us that each skill can be leveled up to a maximum level of 1000. Of course, it took forever and a half to level these skills up, but it really paid off. I nodded repeatedly through his explanation. When he was finished, I wondered if Keiko had followed all that too.

When I asked, she simply answered, "Yup!" in a cheerful voice.

"Well then, you pick out our first target," Klein said to Keiko. Everyone else had moved away into other areas of the field, leaving a large area to hunt our own monsters. "But first, you need to fill in your skills. For now, you should select the «One-handed Sword» skill. That will allow you to use sword skills with one-handed swords like the ones you have now."

Probably because we were making faces like we didn't understand, he continued his explanation. "It's important, because without using a sword skill, your attacks will be nearly useless against monsters. You'll see. The first time you use a sword skill, you'll understand why regular attacks are ineffective."

We followed his instructions and opened the character menu. From there, I pressed the «Skill» button. Unlike every time before, the menu changed instead of just shifting around. The figure in the right hand window which usually showed my equipment disappeared, leaving the window white, not gray and transparent, which I'd finally figured out meant meant the area was inactive. The main icons slid further left, leaving enough room for two more windows in the middle. However, only one appeared, to the left near the icons.

Three empty white boxes sat at the top, the third with a faint yellow border. The rest of the pane was blank, darker and partially see through like any other empty part of the menu. I tapped the first white box and the empty space was filled with the second window that hadn't appeared before. This window listed many different things. Various kinds of swords, maces, polearms... what was a polearm anyway? It also had things like item appraisal and metal refinement.

"There sure are a lot of options," I said.

"Yeah, unfortunately we only have two slots for them at the moment. That and most of them are grayed out, meaning you don't meet the requirements yet. That said, you should just put one-handed sword into your first slot, like I said." I nodded, he was right. Most of the skills were darkened. So I followed his instructions.

I slid down the list with my finger until I came to the skill I was looking for and touched it. In the far right window, a number of lines of text appeared, apparently a description of the one-handed sword skill. I skimmed it, basically a run down on how it was the most basic skill in the game. When we had finished setting our single skill, we both waved away our menu.

"Ok, pick whichever mob you want for our first target, Rai," Klein prompted.

"Mmm..." she looked around for a few seconds. "That one!" She pointed out one boar with such certainty, I couldn't help but crack a smile. I glanced at Klein, who apparently had the same reaction.

He glanced back, "She always like that?"

Something occurred to me then. "Actually... that is..." but I couldn't finish the thought because Keiko had already set off toward the boar.

"Oi, it's dangerous to go alone!" Klein called after her, but she had already moved too close to the boar. It turned in her direction and we both broke into a sprint. However, our pace slowed, then stopped when we saw what happened next. The boar, instead of squealing wildly and charging at Keiko, approached slowly and snorted a few times.

I watched Keiko open her menu and quickly pull out one of those apples from earlier. She held it out to the boar and it gobbled the food right out of her hand. She spent a minute petting it before she stood again and turned back to us with a bright expression.

"Hey look, this one's friendly!" She called our way.

"U,u,u,u," Klein couldn't even stutter out whatever he was trying to say.

"Wow, good job, Keiko!" I called back. She came back over, the boar now walking by her side. When I looked at it, the same hp bar appeared by it as it had with the other boar, but above the bar, it's name read 『Boar Companion』.

Finally, Klein choked out what he was trying to say. "Unbelievable! I,I'd only heard about this on the forums! Apparently, there are a few monsters in the game that are tameable, but the chances of them appearing is almost completely non-existent. It's less likely than winning the lottery and being struck by lightning-twice- in the same day!"

"Well, then it'll definitely happen to her. We shouldn't let her choose any more targets because then we won't have any enemies to fight," I said in a low voice. I wasn't kidding.

"O,ok. You choose the next target then."

"Ah, I'm not sure... if that's a good idea either..."

"Bah, it'll be fine. You've got backup!" He grinned and grabbed his bicep, flexing it as if that would show how strong he was. "Eehhh, but I have a bad feeling about this..."

Author's note: OMG I just checked and I actually got reviews! YAAAAAAAAYYYYYY I can't even begin to say how happy that makes me! ^_^ Thank you anyone who is reading this!


	13. Chapter 13

**Why me? ****Chapter 13**

Author's note: Haha, no more writers block! I actually (sort of) know what I want to happen in this chapter!

"Really... Just... Why is it always me?"...

-a minute earlier-

"Ok, here goes nothing." I jogged forward, holding out my sword. I tried to position it the same way those other guys had. They were as new at this as me, so surely I would be able to use a simple «Sword Skill». Keiko ran behind me, Klein bringing up the rear. The plan was to each make a pass at the boar with a sword skill, effectively killing it before it could even react. I'd chosen one at random, and now it was time to see if I could actually do this.

As I closed the distance to the boar, I kept shifting the sword, searching for the correct place to activate the skill. I entered it's area and the boar turned toward me immediately, it's red eyes boring holes in me. Didn't the others have yellow eyes? It was right then that the terrible feeling ran up my spine and I knew that my bad luck was at work. I was a moment away from stopping in my tracks when I found the sweet spot and my sword began to glow red in my hands. "Gah, wait!" I choked out, but it was too late.

I felt invisible hands pull my body along as this «System Assist» corrected all my movements and brought me through the sword skill. I knew it was coming, I'd been able to see it from a mile away. But I hadn't put up enough resistance. I never should have been the one to pick out an enemy. I knew all the way down to my virtual bones that this 'simple hunting trip' was about to go very far south.

However, I was already in the hands of the system. It carried my through the sword skill. I heard a clear slash as I cut through the boar. After I stopped, I felt my body freeze for an instant. Then, I spun back around. Two more blades passed through the boar and their owners stood next to me in a moment. "Get back!" I called.

Keiko immediately jumped back with me, but Klein just gave us a weird look. In front of my eyes, the boar's hp fell to zero. It exploded into a shower of polygon shards—

And a huge monster exploded from inside the boar. A semi-transparent field, almost like a shockwave, spread around the monster. It threw Klein off his feet and he landed in the dirt behind us. I glanced to check, but his hp had only been reduced only marginally. However, he did not move from that position on the ground.

When I was about to run to him, Klein's voice called up from the ground. "Paralysis! I can't move. Rei, Rai, get the hell out of here. Just leave me and run!"

"We can't do that!" I shouted over my shoulder. "You taught us all about this game, we can't just leave you to die like this!" As the monster stood up to its full height, it released an earth-shattering roar. I could feel my knees shaking, but stood up straight. I would rather die here than run away and leave Klein to die alone. I would never, _ever_ be able to forgive myself for that.

"We're going to fight." The voice from my right echoed my thoughts out loud. Keiko and I nodded together. The five health bars stacked on top of each other appeared to the right of the monster. It's name displayed above. 『The Great Boar Lord』

It's body looked more like that of a horse, and it towered over us, twice our height. It's head was distinctly like the other boars. However, it was bright orange instead of blue. A piercing cry ripped from it's throat and the giant animal rushed toward us. It was on an entirely different level from the «Frenzy Boar». It closed the ground between us in moments.

"Together!" We held our swords up as we'd seen Klein do to stop the smaller ones. We braced ourselves, then it hit us like a truck. We were thrown into the air backward. With a crash, we landed on either side of Klein. In my blurred vision I saw my hp decreasing. I'm dying— the thought struck me harder than this giant. With every point that bar decreased, I came that much closer to dying.

My hands pushed up and my knees moved to take my weight. I sat kneeling, while staring up at this huge monster. And that brings me back to:

"Really... Just... Why is it always me?"...

Author's note: BOSS FIGHT!


	14. Chapter 14

**Desperation**** Chapter 14**

Author's note: Haha I'm on a roll!

My hp sat a little above halfway, about 60% I stood back up. I knew we couldn't beat this thing, but it wouldn't stop me from trying. Before I could come up with anything the Boar Lord charged again. "Split!" we called together and dashed in opposite directions. We couldn't let that thing hit us again, even if we blocked. I went left, skirting close to the sides of the monster, because there were still more boars in the field. I wouldn't be able to fight this one if a bunch more came after me as well.

"That's it!" I had to throw myself sideways when the giant monster turned abruptly and charged at me. I rolled sideways and shouted, "Keiko, use the boars!" before I had to dive out of the way again. I swung my sword to catch the beast in the side as it passed, but no «Sword Skill» activated and my sword bounced off its hide.

Klein wasn't kidding, my sword wouldn't even cut it this way. I glanced sideways to see Keiko pulling apples from her inventory and throwing them at all the boars in the area. I landed on my back and used my momentum to roll back to my feet. However, my balance was shifted upward as my feet came down. The boar rammed right at me and I didn't have enough weight against the ground to throw myself out of the way again.

In the next moment, a boar, named 『Boar Companion』flew up between us. I blocked, sliding my legs wide. It crashed into the small boar and pushed it into the flat of my blade. The comparatively small animal shattered and I felt that massive force of the huge monster crash into me again. Though this time, it was considerably weaker, thanks to the sacrifice of Keiko's pet. I slid backward, watching my hp slowly ebb away, one point at a time.

After a few seconds, I managed to shift my weight the right way to deflect the boar to the side. It went plowing past and skidded to a halt a little more than its body-length away. As it turned back, I raised my sword. However, the sound of squeals interrupted. I glanced backward, and even the Boar Lord seemed to halt its movement as this new development unfolded. A swarm of small boars, every one in the area in fact, charged past me and into the legs of the Great Boar. So many hits at once quickly knocked out its first bar of hp.

It made the most insane noise, I nearly staggered backward. However, I kept my wits and charged forward. I had to use this opportunity while it was immobilized to deal as much damage as possible. It was stomping up and down furiously, taking out a few from the crowd with every step. As soon as I got into range, I launched into a sword skill, «Horizontal».

After first skill finished, I brought my blade back up to start the next. It took me a few seconds between skills to position the sword correctly, but I just kept going as long as the beast was swarmed with small monsters. I only knew two sword skills, so I just went back and forth between «Horizontal» and «Slant», over and over.

The Boar Lord's hp bars disappeared one after another until there were just two remaining. The second to last bar was nearly depleted when it finally finished off the boars holding it in place. It turned its very, scary, angry gaze toward me and let out another high screeching sound.

I winced and it charged. After swinging my sword so much, I felt much more capable. I stepped sideways quickly as the boar passed. Another dodge brought Keiko into my field of view. She was scattering apples to the boars that were respawning after being trampled.

"Keiko, again!" I called. I couldn't really deal damage to this thing because I had to spend all my time dodging it. Only by getting it immobilized could I deal any significant damage.

While nowhere near the size of the original swarm, the group that attacked the Boar Lord would have easily decimated our group, through sheer numbers alone. I cut into its flank again with my two skills. If we kept this up, we would be able to make it out alive! I sent a silent thank you to god that Keiko was here to balance out my luck.

Another sword flung into the boar's side from next to me. "Keiko?!"

"I was out of apples anyway. Let's finish this!" She smiled wide.

"OH!" we shouted together.

The next few minutes passed almost in a daze, my arms traced the same movements so many times, slashing one way, then the other, back and forth, until I hardly had to think. I didn't have to guess at where to position my sword, I just did it. Over and over and over.

Of course, we didn't have as many small boars to hold it in place this time, so it finished them off when its last bar of health was halfway down, in the yellow zone.

Free at last, it charged me with it's burning, rage-filled red eyes. I sidestepped and brought a horizontal slash through it, just like Klein had to the «Frenzy Boar» earlier. This time, instead of just positioning myself and letting the sword skill go, I moved with the skill. I could feel the speed and power increase immediately.

As the boar's health slid slowly lower, it turned again. Keiko was panting lightly next to me. The boar charged and again, I brought my blade along its side. However, near the end of my strike, I raised my feet from the ground. During that instant my body froze after the sword skill, the momentum of my attack put my in a spin. I raised my sword up from the other side and followed up with a «Slant».

When I landed, I slid backward, digging up some dirt with my feet. Keiko landed right next to me again, apparently mirroring all of my moves. I repeated the same combo twice more and the boar's health dropped, point by point.

On the next pass, right before I started my sword skill, the Boar Lord swung its head sideways. I would have been trampled had I started early. Instead of going past with a «Horizontal», I aimed away from the beast. My sword cut into its muzzle and I dashed out of its path at the same time. In a moment, I repeated the action, swinging back around and cutting along its side with everything I had.

Red particles shot out and I thought I saw its hp bar decrease a little more than before. Another two times before it learned that combination. Apparently, it had the capacity to learn from repeated actions, so I wouldn't be able to keep doing the same thing every time.

It only had 20% of its hp left. Its bar was turning red. "The paralysis finally wore off! Klein's voice came from my side. I heard his footsteps rushing forward into the fray. Now it was three against one. I dropped my sword to my side and stepped around the boar, cutting deep.

That dropped the last little bit and turned its bar fully red. Suddenly, it let out a hideous shriek, far worse than anything so far. My head spun and I couldn't manage to balance.

"Confusion! what do we do now?" Klein called out.

"I don't know!" I jumped back to put distance between me and the boar. I landed on my butt, unable to stay on my feet. Keiko stepped away carefully, brandishing her sword. Apparently it hadn't affected her.

"I'll hold it off for now, how long will it take for that to wear off?" She asked.

"Not long, just hang in there!" Klein answered.

Keiko steadied herself and took a deep breath. The boar charged and she met it with a «Slant» to the side of the head. Her attack redirected the boar sideways, just past her.

It rounded on her again, and she beat it off the same way. "Careful, the monsters learn your attack patterns, so they won't work forever," Klein advised her. She nodded seriously.

I could already feel the confusion beginning to fade, but still couldn't get to my feet. Keiko continued beating off it's attacks with powerful strikes of her own. However, the difference in strength was too great. With every attack, a little more of her hp was chipped away.

She was near 30% when the Boar Lord changed it's attacks to counter hers. She brought her sword up to start her sword skill, but the monster shifted its attack at the last moment. Before Keiko could change her position, it was on her.

A flash of red shot from somewhere off to my side. It stopped right between Keiko and the huge monster. Klein swung his curved sword up into the jaw of the boar. He thrashed, and the blade snapped in a shower of light. The boar reared up, crashing into Klein and throwing him rolling across the ground like a ragdoll.

Even from full health, his hp dropped deep into the red. I staggered back to my feet. My vision traveled between the hp of everyone. I had a little more than half. Keiko was almost red. Klein was lucky to still be alive. The boar was very red. Klein's thrust, which had hit so hard it had broken his sword had cut away most of the rest of this terrible monster's health. This battle would be decided in the next few attacks.

I couldn't feel my feet touching the ground, nor could I feel the sword in my hand. To think, I'd become this desperate in such a short time. It wasn't a day ago that I had logged into a game and the worst of my problems was getting an avatar I didn't like.

Stupid. Now I felt so stupid. Even about those kids. That was no game request. Those were really kids. And they were missing their parents. We couldn't do anything to help them back then. No one could. They were probably still wandering the streets searching for their parents that didn't even exist in this world.

I'd finally learned how to play this game, only to find out that it wasn't a game any more. Those words that I'd never even heard Kayaba say, 'this world is your only reality,' or some such. He really meant it.

I stepped forward. The giant boar stared at me with those blood red eyes. It finally made sense. It was just one more thing living in this world. It didn't want to die either. But we couldn't both survive in this, and I had no intention of letting my little sister down.

"UWWOOOOOOOOO!" I charged forward to meet the Great Boar Lord head on. I raised my sword high over my head. And waited for the feeling. Like something just clicked, I felt the system assist as the new sword skill activated. I didn't know the name, but it was a simple downward slash. However, I put all of my strength into the skill and slid between the boar's legs. My sword cut straight through its soft underside all the way down.

A moment after I passed, a huge blast of red particles exploded from the boar's stomach. Another wave of dizziness swept over my and I dropped to my knees. The confusion hadn't totally worn off yet.

Then, another screech came from behind. I glanced to see the boar charging with what could probably be written off as a single point of health left. I couldn't get to my feet, nor turn to face it.

Then, I realized I was kneeling right in front of Keiko. Our eyes met for an instant. We each held onto both swords and held them to face the giant monster. It had so little life left that we didn't need a sword skill to finish it, its own weight impaling it on our swords was more than enough.

The beast let out a hideous groan and I felt both swords shatter. Its charge cut short, but not before landing a solid blow on my back. It landed on top of us before exploding into a shower of shining lights. In the corner of my vision, I saw all three of our health bars reduced to the point of being almost invisible. I rolled off of Keiko and onto my back. We lay there for a little while with lights raining down from the sky.

"So pretty..." the words escaped my lips.

A screen appeared above me. It was the battle result screen. I saw experience in the five figure range. I didn't really know what it meant, but I sure hoped it was a lot.

"You... damn... pig..." you better have been worth it...


	15. Chapter 15

**Kidnapping!? Chapter 15**

Author's note: Oh, did you like the part with the apples in the fight? I knew there would be some use for them when she collected them. They would have been seriously screwed otherwise. Almost like I planned it! XD

Except I actually didn't. _

"..."

"...!"

"...lr..."

"O..."

"Klein!" I bolted upright when I heard someone shout. Everyone stood around us, looking down. I tried sitting up, but I could hardly move; My arms felt like lead. Then my eyes were drawn back to my red hp. I glanced a little down and saw the numbers indicating exactly how much was left. 2/600.(1)

My whole body went cold. I didn't want to move, for fear that simply moving the wrong way would drain the last of my hp. My eyes then traveled to Keiko and Klein's bars. They both had 3 points remaining.

I felt my throat constrict for a moment. What would be the real world equivalent of this situation? Your heart stopping and the doctors had to revive you before you died? Luckily, it seemed that I wouldn't die from not doing anything. So that's exactly what I did.

As I was the first one to come to, all the questions were directed at me. "What happened? Why are you guys so beat up? Did some other guys attack you?" I waved my hands trying to quiet them so I could speak. However, the first words out of my mouth didn't answer any of their questions.

"H,how can we restore our hp?" I asked. The look on my face probably gave away freaked out I still was. This was more than a brush with Death, it was a meeting and a handshake. Now I wanted to say farewell.

"Potions..." one of the men answered hesitantly.

"Do you have any? We need them." I stared at him with such intensity that he took a step back. His hand moved to a pouch at his hip and retrieved a small bottle full of red liquid. That was a potion? I raised my hand to reach for the bottle.

A loud howl resounded over the hill behind us. Oh god, what now? I made a grab for the potion and snatched it out of the man's hand. While I was fighting to open the top, terribly heavy footsteps approached from the back, off to the left. I heard a few panicked shouts and the high sound of many swords being drawn.

In the middle of what I was doing, my head turned slightly, eyes glancing as far to the side as I could. There, I saw a pack of wolves bearing down on us. Why? Why now? I fought harder to open the potion. With a crash, the group who had formed a protective barrier between us and the hostile monsters was thrown aside.

Wolves rushed in around us, sectioning us off from the rest of the group. Of course, one bumped me and knocked the potion from my hand, to shatter with a light tinkling sound. Slowly, I looked up into the eyes of the huge animal. It looked like it would come up to my chest, with a body longer than I was tall. Its body was thick too, muscular like a lion. It had light brown fur, which somehow looked incredibly soft.

I felt my breath catch. I was frozen in place. Totally doomed. The wolf's great mouth opened, coming closer. I squeezed my eyes shut. What would it be like? When I died here and the «Nerve Gear» microwaved my brain, what would it feel like? Would it hurt? Or maybe it would be so fast I wouldn't even realize I was dead?

I felt the wolf breathe. Hot air rushed from its mouth, over my face. That's when I realized its breath smelled sweet, like flowers? I was going to question how that made any sense, but I didn't really care anymore. It wouldn't matter in a few seconds.

The wolf's mouth snapped shut—

on the collar of my shirt. My eyes flew open as I was lifted into the air. Past the wolf that was now gripping my shirt, I saw another leaning down over Keiko. "Get away from my sister!" I shouted. I struggled, but the wolves didn't even notice. I looked at it again, and this time the wolf's hp appeared in my view. Three hp bars stacked up. The name was 『Deep Forest Wolf』 The rest were the same. So every one of them had more than half as much health as that giant we just fought?

For a moment it felt like I would faint, but then the wolf twisted. It threw me backward, over the back of another wolf. At least I landed soft enough to not lose my last points of hp. If they so much as nudged me too hard, I felt like I would die on the spot.

But then, why were they doing this? Weren't monsters the things you killed in these games? And weren't they supposed to try to kill you back? This was more like kidnapping. I struggled to look up, my body still felt heavy from exhaustion. I managed to catch a sight of Keiko hanging over the back of another wolf.

As I watched, my sister's eyes fluttered open. Without thinking, she reached a hand out to the closest wolf and petted its muzzle. Don't do that! I wanted to shout. If it even bit her finger, she would definitely die! However, the wolf's ears just twitched slightly. Then, the entire pack of wolves marched away, carrying us away with them. I saw Klein's group slowly recede into the distance. They were staring, unmoving and unable to help, back at us.

(1)Woops, I got the level 1 hp wrong in chapter 11, so I went back and fixed it.


	16. Chapter 16

**An Old Man?**** Chapter 16**

The wolves moved at a steady pace, moving over the land with great skill. The ride, hung over one's back like a fresh kill, was actually pretty comfortable. As I had expected, the wolf's thick fur was soft to the touch. It was clean and felt nice. It wasn't bumpy and didn't knock me around at all. They moved slowly, as if they realized how terribly injured we were and didn't want to accidentally kill us.

After a while, the plains gave way to forest. Trees popped up on either side of us. The wolves went right through the thick foliage, not taking any sort of path I could see. A few strange looking things, probably monsters could be seen at a distance. If any happened to be in our path, the closest wolf would quickly sink its fangs in and the monster would explode in the same shower of light as all those boars had.

The forest grew more and more thick, until the wolves had slowed to a trudging walk, as they stepped carefully to avoid the massive tree roots that struck up from all over the ground. The made seemingly random turns, changing from one direction to another without any reason.

All at once, we emerged in a small clearing. As we moved forward, I saw a small pond with little bubbles coming up in the middle. A natural spring. In a game? That sounded a bit funny when I thought about it. The water was perfectly clear, no ferns or reeds growing in or around the water. The entire bottom of the spring looked like little bits of gravelly rocks.

The wolves crossed the clearing and passed through a thin curtain of low-hanging leaves. Past the screen, I saw a cabin. It reminded me of the inn we had come from this morning, but so much more remote. It had a small wrap-around porch that went off to the left and and sliding doors. It was clearly more of an eastern style building than the ones we had seen in town. It seemed that the city was supposed to look western. Compared to this house in the woods, it certainly did.

The wolves dipped their heads forward, just enough to allow our bodies to slide from their backs, onto the lush grass immediately in front of the porch. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the slanting light filtering through the canopy above. A wolf nudged my side with its nose and I knew it wanted me to get back up.

Not about to disobey this creature that could take my life in an instant, I slowly rose to my feet. I put my hand out for Keiko to pull herself up as well. We stood there, leaning against each other to stand, until another wolf let out a snorting sound. I glanced back, seeing it motion toward the door with it's head.

We were supposed to go inside. I contemplated this for a moment. Why were a pack of wolves dragging us off into the wilderness, to bring us to what was clearly a man-made structure? For that matter, how were they so smart in the first place? Then it occurred to me. These weren't wolves, they were just computer programs. They were as smart as the programmer made them. The human NPCs (as it turned out, NCP wasn't the right name) were made the same way, so who said a wolf couldn't be intelligent?

Another huff from behind got my feet moving. I shuffled forward, still holding hands with Keiko. Me moved to the door and she knocked lightly. Suddenly, the sound of a crackling fire came through the door. "Come in," a voice called from the other side.

"Sorry to intrude..." we said together as the door slid open. We stepped over the threshold and I immediately felt the air warm around me. A man sat in a big chair facing toward the fire, his back to us. So, you've come at last. First I would like to apologize. I hope Timber and his pack treated you well on the way. I'm sorry to be so abrupt, but I had an important reason to bring you here. You see, I have recently fallen gravely ill. If I don't get the medicine soon, it will surely be the end of me. I need you two to go get it, because this time, my lovely companions cannot."

So, these wolves were all tamed by this old man? And they had brought us here to get him medicine. Was this a... a... quest! That was the word, «Quest». Quests were ways of gaining experience, items, and money faster than usual. Klein had explained it to us at some point on our way to the field earlier. That meant this man wasn't a real person, but an NPC?

"So, where can we find the medicine?" I asked.

"There is a path heading up the mountain in the clearing nearby. At the top of the mountain is a basin holding a magical crystal that will heal me. It is rather difficult to reach, but should be possible for Timber. The reason for his inability this time escapes me. That is why I called you two here. I'm sure you will be able to do it." I'd heard about that from Klein. The only magic in this game were «Crystals», all with various effects.

"We accept. We'll go get that crystal and bring it back here for you." I looked to Keiko, but she didn't look so sure."

"Thank you very much. Also, you should bathe in the spring before you go, it will ease your weariness and heal any wounds you may have." The words 'heal any wounds' made me perk up. I imagined that meant recovering our hp so we wouldn't be standing at death's door anymore.

We exited the cabin, calling back, "please excuse us," and walked slowly through the crowd of, apparently, tame giant wolves. It made me wonder which one was Timber, they all looked the same to me. The wolves followed at our heels, less intimidating now that they weren't carrying us like prey. I glanced back at the closest one. It yawned, showing rows of razor teeth. Ok, still super intimidating, I gulped.

We passed through the curtain of foliage and found ourselves again in the little glade with the natural spring. So, bathing in there would recover our hp? My pace picked up as I moved closer. Then right at the water's, edge a wolf stepped into our path, blocking us from the water. "What? But he told us to..." The wolf made a huffing noise and pointed its nose at us.

After a moment of confusion, I heard bells and looked over at Keiko. She hit the button in her window to take off her clothes. Oh, duh, bathe. I quickly followed. The wolf huffed at us again and I frowned. We hit the button again, which had changed to 『Remove Underwear』a flash of light, and the wolf stepped aside.

Careful not to look at each other, which really didn't make much sense at all because we were completely identical, we slipped into the water.

—COLD. I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to pull my foot back out. Slowly, I slipped the rest of my body into the water and waited to adjust to the freezing temperature. I watched as my hp slowly increased. Despite the water, I let out a contented sigh. It slowly turned yellow, then green, and rose back up to full.

This took quite some time, and by the time it reached 600/600, my teeth were chattering and I jumped back out of the water as soon as I saw the little green dot appear at the end of the bar, indicating it was completely full. I called out my menu and threw all my clothes back on as fast as I could, now shivering in the frigid air. If this was the real world, I'm sure I would have caught a cold from this by now.

I felt Keiko grab me, shivering herself. We huddled together as we tried to bring our body temperatures back up out of the negative numbers. Then, a wolf bumped me from behind. They must have been getting impatient. We slowly walked forward, still stuck together. There was a small path cut through the trees, heading up what looked like a steep mountain.

We walked onto that path and out into the woods. I could hear the wolves traveling a little ways behind us. Both of our swords had broken in that fight with the Great Boar, so they were probably here to protect us from any dangerous monsters. Or maybe they were just keeping an eye on us so we wouldn't run off. Unfortunately, the latter sounded more likely.

The slope beneath our feet slanted up more and more as we went on. After a few hundred meters, we had finally warmed up enough to release each other, because we needed to use our hands to move up the hill. We were nearly climbing. If the slope got any steeper than this, then no wonder why the wolves weren't able to do it, they couldn't possibly climb straight up with their paws.

I looked up to see the sun just beginning to show from the bottom lip of the floor above. What time did that make it exactly? About... 5:00? Maybe 6:00? That meant we had been stuck in this game for a full twenty-four hours already. Had our family noticed yet? What if they didn't? How long were their trips supposed to last? Maybe we would starve before—

I collapsed, clutching my stomach as I realized all at once, I was starving. I hadn't eaten anything at all since I started playing. Whether this was part of the game, or if I was feeling the hunger pangs from my real body, I couldn't be sure. "Onii-chan! What's wrong?"

"A,ah, it's nothing. I just tripped is all." I stood back up, making sure not to give any indication of how awful I felt all of a sudden. I hadn't noticed how hungry I was until I thought about it. I wasn't about to mention it to Keiko and make her feel like this. I wouldn't say anything until we got back to the city, or at least somewhere with food. As far as I could tell, it couldn't kill me. As long as my hp didn't decrease, I would ignore it.

Redoubling my efforts, I scaled the side of the mountain with Keiko at my side and a pack of wolves at my back.


	17. Chapter 17

**Questing ****Chapter 17**

Author's Note: Aww, it's taking longer to write chapters now because I'm trying to write better. But I'm just writing slower. :(

Thankfully, our trek up the mountain was uneventful. The cliffs were pretty steep, but the wolves managed to make their way up behind us. I fought to suppress the gnawing hunger, repeating my new mantra over and over: 'if my hp doesn't decrease, I don't care.' It was only somewhat working.

After climbing another sharp rise, I pulled Keiko up behind me. Turning back, I found myself in a strange new place. There was stone laid, with various houses all around. A small town. However, it felt strangely vacant. Then, I realized there were no sounds. Back in the city, there had always been the sounds of people. Here, there was nothing. It was a ghost town.

We moved forward, passing down the main street, with buildings on either side. On closer inspection, all of the doors were broken down, the windows shattered. Some of the stone from a few had be knocked off. The corner of one shop was gone, as well as most of the front of another. The big building in the middle of the town stood desolate. We moved on.

With the town behind us, the path now led up the side of the mountain. Well, now we at least got to follow a path instead of having to scale the cliffs. It was an easy trek the rest of the way to the summit. Well, easy for us anyway. The path was absolutely crowded with monsters. Lots of skeletons with curved swords and round shields. There were swarms of them.

Of course, we had an escort of giant wolves, so they weren't an issue. The wolves barreled through the skeletons, tearing them all to shreds and opening the path for us to walk leisurely, almost as if we were just on a stroll, and not in the middle of some sort of undead army.

Before we knew it, the ground beneath our feet changed. Instead of loose stones scattered around to form a loose path, the area was practically paved. Of course, it was still constructed of separate stones, but they fit together in complicated pattern, all so close together, grass didn't even grow through.

"Hah, that would have been a lot harder without these guys," I commented.

"Yeah..." Keiko answered vaguely. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply and she seemed to be thinking about something, though I had no idea what. I probably should have thought it was strange, since we were usually on the same wavelength, but it didn't really occur to me there. So, with a shrug, I advanced.

In the center of this near-paved ground stood a massive building of gray concrete. It had a tall tower on top, indicating that this was a church. On either side of the entrance, there was a statue of some sort of goddess. One statue had her wearing heavy armor and a spear, while the other held a bow.

We crossed to the building. "I guess this is where the crystal is?" I directed the question at the wolf, but I already figured I knew the answer, which is why I didn't care that it wouldn't give one. There was a flight of stairs leading up to the big double doors. I skipped up the shallow steps two at a time and walked across the raised area before the doors. I really wanted to get this over with so we could go back to the city and eat.

With both hands I pushed against he doors—

and landed on my butt halfway back to the stairs. "Ow," I winced, brushing myself off as I stood up. At least my hp hadn't taken a hit.

"Onii-chan, look." Keiko pointed at the doors." I stopped, what did she want me to look at? Then I saw it, a faint glimmer hanging in the air between us and the doors. It was slightly golden in color and rippled once in a while.

"Oh, so that's why the wolves couldn't get inside, because of that... barrier? Eh? Then how are we supposed to get through?"

"Well, what's the difference between us and these wolves?" Keiko asked. At first it seemed kind of funny. We were people and they weren't. But then I thought about it. It didn't have to do with who we were, but what we could do.

"They couldn't use sword skills!" I came to the conclusion with a smile. Keiko wagged her finger at me.

"That's no good, because we can't either right now." Ah, that's right, we didn't have a single sword between the two of us.

"Ahh... well then what else..." I opened the system menu and pulled up the character menu. Hmmm.

"That's it, we have skills," I realized. Not sword skills, just skills. I tapped to open the character menu, then the skills menu. After a moment of the windows reorganizing, I tapped the second skill slot, still left empty. The same huge list of skills came up from before. "Mmmmm," it was too many to sort through, there must have been hundreds. Klein had even mentioned skills that weren't on the list and didn't show up until you met various requirements.

"Jeez that's a lot of skills..." I thought out loud.

"Wait, Onii-chan, look at this." Keiko leaned over and touched a little icon above the massive list of skills. All the gray skills disappeared from the list, leaving only the white ones- ones I could actually use. It was actually a bit daunting just _how_ much smaller the list was though. I scanned down, but nothing really popped out at me. Most of the skills were just all the other weapon classes, like daggers. That only left a small number of actual skills. I noticed searching, hiding, and sprint among them. I tapped each and scanned the description to get a basic idea of what they did.

"Hey, Keiko, we should put the «Sprint» skill in our second slot. We'll need it when these wolves decide we can't open this door." I spoke quietly while sliding the skill over onto my seconds skill slot. Another bell sound indicated her doing the same. "One more thing, didn't Klein only mention us getting two slots? What's this third one for?" I tapped it and the second window flashed closed, then open to a new list.

The list contained just one skill. «Blessed Twins». I tapped this new skill. The information in the right hand window displayed short description. How could such a weird sounding skill have a shorter description than the skill that let you run faster? All it said was: 『Gives bonuses based on the other Twin's stats, as well as other things.』 Seriously? 'As well as other things'? Just how vague could it be? Everything else had a long rundown on every little intricacy, and this one may as well have said 'It does stuff' for all the good it did.

Although, it was the only skill on the list. "What do you think about this?" I asked.

"Well, it sounds kind of cryptic..."

"Hmm, I say we use it. It mentions 'bonuses' and a bonus is always a good thing, right? I couldn't hurt, could it?"

"Well, I see your point there. I've got to agree with you on this one." We nodded.

"Banzai!" we said together as we dragged the skill over to the third, slightly different colored, skill slot.

"What?"

"I don't know."

"This is weird."

We stood there, looking at each other for a few moments. Nothing had happened, but everything had was spinning. I started feeling strange, almost like I was dizzy, or panicked, or, something. I don't know how to describe it. It's just that gut feeling when you know something is very wrong.

We stood there, our expressions changing at random, like we couldn't fully control ourselves anymore. I tried to shake myself free of the weird feeling, but I somehow managed to fall over instead. Keiko bent to help me up, but lost her balance in the middle and I had to help her up instead.

Then, an idea came to mind. "Ok, Keiko, hold very still." We both stood still. After a few moments, I suddenly started doing jumping jacks. She started too, then halted awkwardly in the middle and fell down.

"Well, that clears things up pretty well. Ok, well not really, but I know what's wrong now at least." We both raised our left hands. "See that? It seems that, for some reason, whatever we try to make our avatar do, our actions reach the other avatar too. Umm, how to put it simply... Something like: Instead of being one person, now we're both two people..."

"Huh? But that doesn't make any sense, Onii-chan."

"Why not? This game reads our brainwaves and sends the commands to an avatar in the game. Now, it's sending our actions to two different places instead of one. This game is so weird, it really doesn't surprise me at all."

"Mmmm, this is really inconvenient though..." Keiko muttered.

"Yeah, I see your point. There has to be more to it though. So far, it seems like all the skills in this game let you do things. So this one should be the same. There has to be something new we can do now that we have it. I just don't know what..."

"Well, before that, judging by the skill's name, I guess we have it because we're twins, funny how that works, right?" We both giggled.

"Yeah, I guess so," my face going back to its usual look suddenly. "The thing is, we don't know if it's a product of your luck or mine. That's to say, we don't know if it'll help, or just make our lives hell." I sighed.

"Well, right now, it sadly seems like yours..." Keiko looked away dismally. "Also, I think I can kind of feel what you feel now too. So I wanted to ask, what's that bad, painful feeling you have?"

I immediately knew what she was talking about, my starving hunger. "Ah, it's nothing!" We both flailed our arms around. "It's well, umm, yeah... uhhh... nothing at all, you must just be imagining it!" I didn't think for a second that she actually bought that. But, as long as I didn't tell her, we wouldn't both have to feel the hunger of two people at the same time.

Then, I felt a bump against my leg— no, that was her leg. It suddenly occurred to me that it would be really bad if we forgot which of us was which. A second wolf bumped my leg. I couldn't quite keep my balance, and fell to the ground. When I tried scrambling back to my feet, I accidentally sent Keiko sprawling. She tumbled forward, running into me and throwing us both against a wall.

Except, it wasn't a wall. We crashed through the big double doors of the church and rolled to the floor in a heap. We both managed to sit back up, looking back when we heard the excited yips from the pack of wolves. They rushed the doorway behind us and I leaned to cover Keiko, but their excited cries suddenly cut short.

I looked back to the doorway, to see the monstrously huge wolves bouncing off the barrier like giant rubber balls and landing all over each other. A few let out short snarls. Clinging to each other, Keiko and I managed to get back to our feet. We looked away from the wolves, into the center of the church.

Strangely, there was almost nothing inside. There was a single altar standing in the middle of the room. On it sat a small rectangular box. It was purple in color and held a sort of inner glow. We stepped toward the alter and extended our hands, picking up the little box together. It felt a little heavier than it looked. I let go so Keiko could hold onto it. I would be likely to drop it off a cliff on the way back. In her care, the thing may as well have been protected by God.

As we slowly moved back to the entrance, I moved a finger on my left hand back and forth slowly while watching her hand. Her finger didn't move at all. I flicked my finger quickly and hers twitched at the same time. That made it seem like sudden or quick motions were more likely to be reproduced between us.

So, no sudden movements and we'll be fine.

On the walk back, I opened my menu to check on something. I recalled seeing two different menus labeled «Skills». I pulled up the other skills menu, from the icon with the rectangles near the bottom of the menu. It was pretty much as I expected. My eyes immediately settled on «One-Handed Sword» in the left-most window and I touched it. I looked over at the right window when it changed to display the information. Instead of a long-winded description like the other menu, this one listed the sword skills I could perform, with 『One-handed Sword』 at the top. I red down the list, just four skills long: 『Horizontal』, 『Slant』, 『Uppercut』, and 『Vertical』.

I tapped uppercut, the only skill I hadn't used before. A new popup over top everything else, showed a figure holding a sword downward. Then the picture changed, now showing the sword pointed upward, with little motion lines showing that it swung upward.

The little diagram repeated itself. It was crude, but displayed what I needed to know. Done with this, I tapped the «Stats» button to the left. The little window closed as the others reordered and the right window again changed to tell me all about my character. Attack, defense, movement speed, and maximum weight limit. That was it? Wow, I thought it would be a lot more complicated than that.

Of course, it also had my health, experience, and level on the bottom. Oh, it also showed how much more experience I needed to level up again. Speaking of which, I was currently level 3 with 23000 exp and needed 1000 more to level up. I looked at the window in the center and found two more statistics, though it looked like I could control these. At the top, it said 『9 points remaining』 with 『Strength』 and 『Agility』 below. They both were listed as 0, but had a little (+) button next to them.

"Keiko, I figured something out, look at this." I showed her what I'd learned. In the interest of survival, we both put one of our points into strength and the other five into agility. That would surely help us flee for our lives later when something else terrible happened. As I increased these numbers, it seemed like my hp bar was dropping, but when I checked, it said my hp was 600/636. So, I hadn't lost any health, my maximum had gone up by increasing my strength and agility.

The rest of the walk to the base of the mountain went in silence. I tried to focus my thoughts on my own body, cutting out any interference from Keiko's mind. How well it worked, I had no idea. But, it couldn't hurt, could it?

We finally passed into the little glade with the spring. Through the curtain and back up to the old man's door. That's what I'd call a «Quest» well done.

Author's Note: Muahaha! I actually know what I want to happen in the next chapter!


	18. Chapter 18

**Blessed Twins**** Chapter 18**

"Sorry to intrude," we said together as we stepped back into the little house.

"We got the crystal for you from the top of the mountain," I informed him, though that should probably have been obvious enough.

"Ah, thank you girls," my eyebrow twitched at that, "I've been waiting for this day for a long time."

"Huh?" I tilted my head a bit, how long had he been laid up in his house? He shook slightly, his body shaking as he laughed in joy.

"'What once The Blessed Twins sealed, only can The Blessed Twins release.' And now, I will finally break the seal!" He stood up, turning to face us when—

Wolf. He had a wolf head. A wolf's head attached straight onto a human body. We both jumped away, backs landing against the door. Stories of sealed demons tricking people into releasing them were rather common, but I'd never expected it to happen to us for real!

"Go," I said hollowly. He took a step toward us, around the big chair which had hidden his true form. "Run!" I threw the door open and we dashed outside. With a running start, we leaped over the confused wolves.

"Get them! Catch those wretched women!" Came a furious, snarling shout from behind. We were through the curtain and back into the clearing before we heard the thunder of feet behind us.

"This way!" Keiko pulled me to the right, away from the mountain path we had just returned from. We struck straight out into the woods.

"Where are we going?" I shouted as I ran.

"The closest town!" she shouted back. Already, I could hear the sound of crashing and snarling closing in behind us. If those wolves caught us, we were done for, they would tear through us like tissue paper. Then, we found a clear spot and dropped into a sprint. I suddenly felt the system assist kick in, like with a sword skill, but now it pulled us along as our running speed nearly doubled. While I may have had wretched bad luck, at least I knew so and planned for it ahead of time. The «Sprint» skill from earlier was really paying off.

Unfortunately, the clear strip didn't go on forever, and we had to return to a normal run. Our pace quickly dropped as we were forced to wind through the trees again. Through the trees, I saw one of those strange plant monsters ahead. The name above its head read 『Little Nepent』. That was the least of our worries right now, so we plowed right through. I threw out an arm to shove it aside—

A massive bang rang through my ears and a strange, foul smell assaulted my nose. Don't care, keep running. Kicking off again, I immediately noticed movement all around us. In the slight moment I was stunned by the plant monster, the wolves must have come up around us.

No, that wasn't it. Those were all more 『Little Nepents』. "UWAA! Why now?"

"That bang must have signaled them. This way!" Keiko made a left and we shot toward another group on incoming monsters. As we approached, it seemed like they were getting ready to attack. We sank lower, running as fast as we could over the uneven ground.

Sprays of weird mist spewed from the monsters'... mouths? They didn't seem to have mouths, but the mist had to come from somewhere. We dove through it all and a wave of, well, not pain, but an unpleasant feeling made me grit my teeth. If this game didn't cancel pain, I don't know if I could have kept going after that.

In the corner of my view, our hp bars were dropping quickly. I heard loud snarls and shrieks coming from behind. Tearing and hissing sounds echoed all around. We ran straight through the 『Little Nepents』in our path, throwing them out of our way and charging on. Before we were out of range though, I felt a few more blasts from that mist land against my back. My hp was almost yellow already, and still dropping.

The wolves tore through the small plant monsters and were already on our heels again. I could hear one just a few paces behind. I stepped up my pace, but there wasn't enough free room to sprint. I heard a yip sound and ducked, pulling Keiko to the ground with me. The wolf flew over us, claws tearing through the air where we had been.

We used all the excess momentum to roll back to our feet. Thankfully, as long as we were acting in unison, we didn't interfere with each other. But with the wolf now in front of us, we would soon be trapped. Keiko veered right without warning, pulling me off balance. I brought my right foot up and kicked the wolf in the side of the head, using the moment it was stunned from the sudden blow, as well as the slight force to the right to turn and get out of range as it snapped at my heels.

"Where to now?" We're going to get surrounded!" I ducked around a tree to one side, her going around the other side, and came together again.

"I don't know, but we have to keep running!" Keiko's head was swishing side-to-side. "This way!" We shot left again.

Then, I spotted a wolf coming directly across our path. With only a moment to move before it ran right into the side of us, I stepped around behind Keiko. I kicked the ground hard and launched forward. It lunged toward Keiko and brought its jaws toward her throat, when my knee smashed straight into the side of its neck.

The wolf went rigid for a moment, missing its chance to attack. Of course, in the middle of the attack, my other foot caught a root and I went toppling forward. Keiko grabbed my hand, but it pulled her off balance.

Then there was air beneath us. We all went over the side of a hidden ravine. "Keiko!" My head swiveled just in time to see her hand reach out for the cliff overhead. She caught it, but that was her hand holding the crystal. Her hand slipped, dropping the crystal atop the cliff as she fell. I reached out, grabbing her hand and pulling us together. The ravine was deep falling off into blackness below, but I could see a ledge jutting out from the side not far below.

"Grab my waist, quick!" I grabbed the wolf which was falling next to us and pulled it underneath our bodies. The animal finally seemed to come to, but it couldn't maneuver any better in the air than we could, and I had my arms wrapped around it's back in a bear hug. It snarled angrily, then we hit the ground.

The shock ran up through the wolf, through me, and all the way up through Keiko as well. I saw my hp sharply decrease. I was nearly in the red zone again, with just 25% remaining. Keiko was doing a little better, but not by much.

Sadly, the wolf had a lot more health than us, so I had survived the fall, despite being used as cushion for two people. We shot back against the cliff and it stood, baring its teeth menacingly. It's health was deep red, but in this world, that didn't mean anything until it hit zero.

It let lose a howl and launched itself at us. Even unarmed, we had no choice but to fight. We both step to the side, placing the wolf between us. The path was wide enough for the two of us to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, but that was it. The wolf took up most of the path on its own.

It was about to lunge at me, but Keiko kicked out its hind legs and it fell to the ground. I planted a kick against the side of its head before it scrambled back up and spun toward my sister. This time I kicked it in the flank and it leaned to one side, where Keiko kicked it in the neck, smashing its head against the rock wall. Although our attacks were stunning it, we didn't appear to actually be dealing any damage. We both knew this and nodded.

I kicked out one of its hind legs and the beast pitched sideways, toward the ravine. Keiko kicked it in the head again, causing it to turn slightly. During that opening, we both stepped around and kicked it in the stomach, sending it skidding sideways. At that point, we kicked off and charged into its side, pushing with all our strength. It slid, but not enough. The wolf recovered and started to snap it sharp teeth at us.

We both jumped back again. While it was still so close to the chasm, we acted again. For once, acting in unison seemed to be helpful. Two kicks against either side of its neck, then two at the front of its chest. Each time, it slid back just a couple centimeters. I could see it's back paws very nearly hanging off the edge.

We stepped to the left as one, now both kicking it on the left side. It stumbled sideways and we jumped into the air. Together, we drop-kicked the wolf and sent its hind legs over the edge. It scrambled for a moment, but its own body weight pulled the rest of it into the void.

We stood panting for a few moments before a 『Result』window appeared in front of us. Then, a glowing light showered over us. I looked up to see a pair of 『Level Up』inscribed in the air above each of our heads. Then I noticed the faces of all the wolves staring down at us from the top of the cliff.

"AAAAWWWOOOOO..." their howls echoed down to us from above.

"We better get out of here before they come and slaughter us for that." Keiko smiled wryly.

"Y,yeah..." I replied. The path was rather wide, and very straight. Perfect for us to sprint. Keiko in front, me in back. As long as she was leading, the path wouldn't suddenly end and leave us to fall off a cliff. On the contrary, I felt reassured that we would make it to safety.

As we ran, I could hear the wolves barking, howling, snarling, and making all sorts of unpleasant noises from above. We increased our pace until we reached the limit of how fast our stats would allow us to run.

On and on, we ran while while the wolf noises slipped behind, bit by bit. The cliffsides behind lowered and our path led upward slightly. We ran, going for one minute, then two, then five. Periodically, I felt as if the system tugged us forward just a little bit faster. The sounds of our own heavy breathing drowned out almost everything else. When the cliff on our side shortened to just a ten meter drop, I heard panting and heavy, *thump thump* footfalls behind us. Now on level ground, I could hear the wolves closing in again.

"Keiko, we leveled up... Put more points... into agility." I panted. We both waved our hands tapped once, twice, and pulled up the stats menu. Six more points went into agility and I immediately felt myself moving faster. It wasn't enough to pull away from the wolves; They were strong, four-legged animals, made for running. But, it slowed their advance, even if by a little bit.

I moved up beside Keiko, grabbing her hand and urging every bit of speed out of my feet. Finally, the rocky path leveled out with the forest floor. Directly ahead, I saw buildings. Not dropping out of a sprint, we wove the the side slightly, around the few trees between us and the clearing surrounding the village ahead.

Ravenous hunting howls exploded all around us. "Gogogogo!" We cleared the last of the trees and plowed into the field. I could see other people, other players, in the small village. They had armor. They had weapons. _Safety._ I hung onto the word and ran. On our heels, I heard the crash of wolves and angry cries.

My eyes glanced back. The whole pack, thirty-some wolves strong, was spread out around us. They closed, bit by bit. By now, all the people in the village had seen us. Many rushed out to help, but stopped short when they saw the odds they were up against. They probably didn't want to get themselves killed.

I heard shouts though. "Run!" "Hurry up!" And "You can do it!" Reached us from the crowd.

"Come on Keiko, we have to survive!" A message displayed at the side of my vision. I felt another tug, the system assisting us just a tiny bit more. Less than fifty meters remained before we would make it to the village. Then we would have not only the help of all the players, but also the NPC guards as well.

Twenty meters left, I could feel the hot breath of the wolves close around us.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

—A wolf caught the back of my foot. The town was right there, so close. I leaped with all my might. I felt the wolf's teeth close down, catching the back of my shoe as I just barely slipped out of its grasp. I felt my shoes disappear from my feet as they were destroyed by the wolf's bite, but I didn't care.

Keiko and I flew into the crowd, caught in the welcoming arms of other humans. Shouts of congratulations and good job went up all around. I saw the words 『Inner Area』appear in the middle of my vision for a moment. I turned back to see the wolves stop just short of the porcupine wall of spears, swords, shields, and all manner of other weapons pointed their way.

Slowly, the wolves retreated across the field, then vanished back into the woods, hateful stares pointed back at us the entire way.

"We're sorry! We shouted at the same time, bowing low to everyone around us. We both tried apologizing and explaining at the same time, but our words got all tangled up and we both started speaking in unison.

"It's just—"

"We didn't know—"

"Thought he was an old man—"

"A normal quest—"

"But the wolves—"

"And the crystal—"

"He seemed kind—"

"And the temple—"

"We're new at this—"

"That kind of thing—"

"And now—"

"What do we do—"

"We're so sorry—"

"We didn't have a choice—"

"All those wolves—"

Our babbling was cut short when booming laughter echoed from deep in the forest.

"I. AM. FREEEEE!" The ground trembled beneath us as laughter rang out over the land. "Muahahahahahahahaha." After it faded, everyone stood as if paralyzed for a few moments. Then—

『Outer Area』appeared in my vision.

"What the hell?" A number of people shouted.

"The town's protection is gone?" One player gasped. Everyone started shouting at once.

"Uh oh." Keiko and I said together in quiet voices.

Author Note: Muahahaha. ^_^


	19. Chapter 19

**Incoming**** Chapter 19**

"So, what happened exactly?" We were sitting in the small town's inn, across the table from a blue-haired man who looked a little older than us, with a sword and shield on his back. He wore a crude iron chest plate which looked a bit beaten up over his leather armor. He seemed to be sixteen or seventeen years old. Now that I thought about it, despite our good looks, we still clearly looked fourteen.

"Well, it all started this morning. We were in the field outside the «Starting City» when a pack of wolves ran out and grabbed us. We couldn't fight them, so we let them bring us with them. They took us to this little house in the woods, where an NPC gave us a quest to get him a crystal from the top of the mountain. We went, got it, and returned. When we got back, he turned out to be a sealed demon, so we ran away with the crystal."

"However," Keiko followed up. "We fell into a ravine while fleeing from those wolves and I dropped the crystal. The wolves must have picked it up and taken it back to that demon. And now he's been released."

"That's basically how it went," I nodded.

The blue-haired main sighed. "Well, I can't really hold it against you, I would have done the same thing. I'd say its a miracle that you fled all the way through the forest without being caught by those wolves. At least you got here to warn us about what's going on. With the town's protection gone, I'm sure it means that the demon is going to attack the town. Until then, we'll prepare for its defense. Word has been spreading since you got here. I'm sure we'll have plenty of reinforcements by the time he attacks. So, what kind of demon was it?"

"A wolf demon," we responded together.

"Since you got away before he returned to his true form, I'm guessing you don't know anything about his combat abilities, right?" He smiled wryly. We nodded and said sorry. "Haha, it's alright. We'll make sure to deal with this properly." He was quiet for a minute, looking back and forth between us.

"Well, with this business concluded, you two should probably, well, get yourselves tidied up." He averted his eyes then. I let my eyes look down at myself.

"Hiya!" We both let out shocked cries. Our clothes were all torn up and hardly even covered anything anymore. "W,where can we get a new set of clothes?"

"You can get some at the tailor shop across the street from here. He slid a small sack toward us, which jingled with the sound of coins. I grabbed the bag and stood. "Thank you very much!" We bowed together. "E,excuse us!" We ran out of the inn and across the road, astonished players clearing a path for us as we ran.

We burst through the door of the shop and approached the shopkeeper. She said "Welcome." Not flustered at all by our dramatic entrance, nor the state of our clothes— an NPC.

"What do you have for sale?" We both asked together.

"We have a good selection of clothes and armor," she responded. Then, a window appeared in front of each of us labeled 『Shop』It had a list of items and a few filter buttons at the top to show only clothes or armor, or sort by tops, bottoms, shoes, gloves, and so on.

I scanned down the list. They had the same «Cloth Shirt» and such that we were wearing now, as well as a few leather items. The leather cost more, and I didn't even know how to check how much money I had, so I just tapped on a «Cloth Shirt» first.

A second window, listing numerous statistics about defense, mobility, and such appeared to the left of the first window. At the top, it had a little three-dimensional preview of the item. It looked just like the clothes I had now, but black. Near the bottom of the window, it listed the price. 『50 Col』 There was a little option underneath, 『Color: Black』I tapped it, a little drop-down box appearing. I touched 『Blue』on the list and it replaced black next to the color. Then I saw the price change from 『50 Col』to 『250 Col』I changed it back to black and hit the 『Buy』button all the way at the bottom of the second window.

I then bought «Cloth Pants» and another «Cloth Shoes». Standing right in the middle of the shop, we unequipped all our clothes,(seriously, they didn't cover much of anything anyway) and put on our new ones.

"Aahh, pants, finally." I said happily. Keiko frowned at me.

"Now I don't look the same as Onii-chan," she pouted.

"You're welcome to wear pants too," I suggested. She just stuck her tongue out at me.

We left the shop and looked around. We were going to need new swords. I'd realized just how scary it was not to have a weapon when we hadn't even been able to hurt that wolf before.

"Hey Keiko, have you figured out where it says how much money we have?" I asked. I was still carrying around the little bag of money that man had given us earlier.

"It's listed in the «Items» menu. I opened it up and immediately gasped at the menu. It had all sorts of strange things listed. Leathers and hides and teeth and claws. Where did I get all this stuff? "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we picked up a lot of stuff from the giant boar and from that wolf." Ah, now that she said that, it made sense I hadn't really checked the 『Result』window to see how many items I got.

I looked toward the top of the list. It said that my inventory was 60% full. At the bottom, it listed my money 『14750 Col』. "Wow, isn't that a lot? All my clothes only cost 150 Col."

Keiko nodded, "Yeah, I think so, mine were only 100 Col." I scanned the list of items again and stopped when one caught my eye. «Wolf-Tooth Sword» I dragged it into my equipment menu, then equipped it. I drew the blade from its sheath and fell over. "Oof, _heavy_. Why is it so heavy?"

I manged to get it back in the sheath and unequipped it, panting. I pulled it up in the menu again and tapped the icon in my equipment list. A little window came up, listing a bunch more statistics. I really was going to have to learn what all this meant at some point.

I did find what I was looking for though: 『Requirements』. If everything here was based off numbers, the sword being so heavy had to be because I was missing something. Sure enough, it said it needed 4 points of strength. I only had 1 point. Of course in a world where strength was number instead of a vague concept, the game could say 'you aren't strong enough,' so the sword is super heavy.

Well, if it needed more strength, I would just get more when I leveled up again. If it needed more, it was probably a stronger sword. In the meantime, we asked another person where the weapon shop was. The shop had a number of things listed, but when I tapped them to look at their information, I found that they were all kinds of different weapons. The only one-handed sword was the «Bronze Sword». They didn't have any requirements, so we each bought two, just in case, and equipped them.

Somehow, I felt more safe with a sword at my hip. Funny how fast things change... Just yesterday, I'd never even played video games before, and here I was now, comforted by the weight of a new blade.

Of course, now that I had figured out the menu, I realized something strange. My inventory listed not only my items, but Keiko's items as well. That's why I now had four «Cloth Shirts», and four «Bronze Swords». I mentioned this to Keiko and she nodded, saying she had noticed as well. We easily concluded that it must be something to do with that strange «Blessed Twins» skill.

We left the shop, just in time to see something amazing. A huge number of players were slowly flowing into the small town. They really had called for backup after all. I sighed. With this many people, we would definitely be ok. We would be able to beat that demon when it showed up and this whole mess would be sorted out.

The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon and there was just one thing left to do. I quietly asked someone where I could get some food and he pointed me to a shop. I brought Keiko along without telling her anything. As soon as we entered the shop and the smell of soup wafted to our noses, we both practically collapsed from the sudden gnawing hunger that tore through our bodies (Doubly worse since we both felt the hunger twice-over).

I heard someone call out to us and turned to see who. It turned out to be the same blue-haired man from before. He invited us to his table and jokingly asked why we were so hungry. When we answered that we hadn't eaten since we started playing, his eyes went wide.

"Seriously? You managed to do all that while starving?"

"Only I was starving, I didn't notice the hunger at all until I thought about food. Ah, that's what I wasn't telling you about earlier, because I didn't want you to have to go through it too." I grinned weakly at Keiko.

"Well, thanks for that one, On..." her eyes flitted around, "...ee-chan." She carried on, to cover hear earlier hesitation. "This hunger is a lot worse than the bit of worry you caused me earlier."

"Heh, you can say that again," I replied smoothly. I was wondering why she had referred to me that way. She obviously wasn't joking— it was like she didn't want to reveal that I was actually a boy. I knew she had a reason for it, but right now I couldn't be sure what that reason was.

The NPC waiter showed up then and took our orders. We all ordered some sort of soup, because it seemed that it was the best tasting, cheapest thing they sold.

"Oh, that reminds me, we didn't need the money you gave us." I held the bag back up and pushed it across the table to him. "We happened to have enough Col from hunting earlier."

"Ah," he nodded. "Then this can pay for the meal."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Keiko touched my arm under the table. It was natural for a man to treat ladies to food— is what she seemed to be telling me. I didn't like it, but I went along with it for now.

"Well then, my name is Diabel. My profession is «Knight»."

"There are professions in this game?" The words came out of my mouth before I realized I was speaking.

"Ack," he let out a small sound. "Well, no, but I'm a «Knight» because I want to be.

"You can do that?" I asked.

"Of course!" He smiled a brilliant smile at me. Wow, good looking guy. Since that was his appearance in the real world, he was probably really popular with the girls. Ehh, lucky him. Sadly, I'd never been very popular. I thought I looked pretty good, but I'd just never been popular. It was surely because I was always with my sister. That, and we were both quiet. So I guess we kind of just faded into the background as 'those twins' or something like that.

Well, those days were as good as gone. Because now we both appeared to be beautiful girls in a world dominated by men. I was going to have to get used to people staring at me... Somehow, it felt like this was going to go on for a long time...

We ate quietly, and Diabel paid for the mean as promised. Really, I don't understand men like that. The meal cost just 100 Col. We had over 14000 on us(not that we told him that), but he paid anyway. Then again, he may have had even more than we did. Whatever the case, we parted after the meal. He went off to gather the newcomers and explain the situation. He also mentioned setting up a town guard while the area wasn't under the protection of the system. 'We can't have people going rouge and fighting in the city,' was what he said, or something like that.

We headed over to the inn and talked to the innkeeper, but all the rooms were full already.

"Eehh? Where are we supposed to sleep?" Keiko cried when she heard the news. We imminently received invitations to stay in the rooms of everyone within earshot. "Ummm..." She couldn't seem to decide. While we would get a room to stay in, it would be with another group of men. Not exactly the kind of situation I wanted to put myself in, given this body, much less so, my precious little sister.

"I'm sorry, we'll have to decline your generous offers." I said. Everyone looked depressed after I said that. I felt bad for them, but I couldn't put us back in the same situation as yesterday. Those guys had been nice enough to show us how to play the game. Klein had even protected us with his life on the line when he needed to. But they were still guys, and even they had taken off all our clothes to 'make us more comfortable.' I didn't even want to think about what a group of less chivalrous men might do.

"Wait just a second..." I muttered. Chivalrous? "Come on, Keiko." I pulled her back out into the slowly darkening city and looked around. Not here. "Can you find Diabel again?" I asked her. She nodded and we walked for a minute, before coming right up to him. I gave her a pat on the shoulder to say thanks while I walked up to him.

"Hey, Diabel-san."

"Ah, good evening..." Then I realized my interruption earlier had kept us from introducing ourselves to him.

"Oh, sorry about not introducing myself earlier. My name is Rei, my sister is Rai." I grudgingly made sure to use the feminine way of introducing myself.

"Then, good evening, Rei-san, Rai-san." He smirked slightly, though I wasn't sure why. "Do you need something?"

"Well, actually, I'm kind of embarrassed to have to ask this..." no, I really wasn't at all. I just felt that he wouldn't take advantage of my sister. "...but the inn is full, so we don't have a place to stay tonight. Would you be willing to allow us to stay with you? If you have anywhere to stay yourself— that is." I spoke somewhat haltingly.

It actually made me feel a bit bad taking advantage of the guy because he thought I was a girl, but I couldn't worry about that now. We needed somewhere to sleep safely. Of course, his face lit up. Any guy who thinks himself a chivalrous knight would jump at the chance to give two beautiful women a place to sleep.

I mentally sighed. This life was definitely going to get to me. I recalled what Klein had said about being in a body of the wrong gender having adverse effects on your mind. Just what sort of 'adverse effects'? Thinking about it made me shiver.

"Don't worry, Onii-chan, it'll be ok," Keiko whispered in my ear. Could she listen to my thoughts now too? I sighed internally again. Sharing two bodies with another person— one more thing that couldn't possibly be good for my mind.

Without much more discussion, we followed Diabel over to a small house. We walked inside and up a staircase. He informed us that a number of NPC houses rented out the second floor for players to stay in. He'd found it for cheap and rented it for a few days.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he operated a menu on the door for a few moments before opening it and allowing us inside. The room wasn't very large, but it was warm and had a bed. And there was no one else inside. He told us that 'of course' we could use the bed.

After he informed us that he had set the door to allow us in and out, but no one else would be able to enter without us opening the door. He still had things to do, so he left again, shutting the door quietly behind him.

We both unequipped our swords and shoes, then collapsed on the bed, all the fatigue of the day suddenly crashing over us. We didn't even move to climb under the covers before everything went black.

Author's note: Haha, the chapters are getting longer now! :p I hope that it somewhat makes up for the slower releases. :(

This will probably be the last chapter I post for a bit, since I'm going out for a while after this. I might get one more posted today, depending on how things go.


	20. Chapter 20

**Early Morning**** Chapter 20**

Author's note: Uwaaa! I got to (sort of) cosplay today! ^_^ So much fun! Nyoro~n. :3

Anyway, where was I...

I opened my eyes. I blinked a few times. I was staring at a strange ceiling. Somehow, this felt familiar. I could vaguely remember that I hadn't fallen asleep at home last night. So where was I? I rolled out of bed and stood sleepily, my gaze crawling around the small room. There were walls, and a floor, and a ceiling... Wait, didn't all rooms have those?

I looked back down behind me, at the bed I had been laying in. The covers were pushed aside where I had been, but covered the girl still sleeping in the bed. "Onii-chan?" I asked. What? Onii-chan? Wait, that wasn't me—

I shot up in bed. "Woah!" I blinked away the afterimage of what I'd just seen. "Weird dream..." I looked over at Keiko standing, exactly where 'I' had been a moment ago. "Or... not..." I flopped back down. That was just freaky. A head of blue hair rose from the side opposite my sister.

"What's going on?" We jumped back, though I managed to suppress a startled yelp. "Woah, who... oh." I recalled who he was and why he was in the same room as us. "Nevermind. Good morning Diabel-san."

He replied the greeting to both of us and abruptly stood, dressed in a pair of shorts. He opened his menu, moving to the door while equipping his regular clothes and armor. We followed, although we had no armor to equip.

Once we reached the base of the stairs, he advised us to equip our swords as well. There was currently no protection in the town(which I had learned protected players by not allowing their hp to decrease, outside of duels, during our discussion over dinner) so we should always have a weapon on hand.

We followed his instructions and followed him outside. Our group of three traveled through the streets while Diabel explained that we were going to help organize the scouting groups, which were going to patrol the town's perimeter day and night until we got word that the demon was coming. Until then, we were all going to stay put and hunt to increase our levels.

But first we needed to set up that watch, so we would could get some early warning as to when we would come under attack. He also told us we would need to buy some armor and potions. When we asked what kind of armor, he said he would pick it out for us. We generally shrugged in agreement and went on our way.

#####

Author's note: Ok, I'm too tired to keep writing, so I'm just going to post this, then finish it tomorrow. I'll also go and fix all the exp errors I made. However, I'm still trying to figure out how to work the hp.

-Next Day-

Oh man I've been busy. With the help of a can of red bull and some ice tea, I managed to stay up for ~25 hours and completely reverse my day-night schedule. -_-; Not the most pleasant experience seeing as it was the same day I had been running all over the place in a cosplay...

Anyway!

#####

"Oi!" a voice called out from behind. Somehow, I realized it was directed at us and turned around—

Just in time for a hand to come down, presumably to slap my shoulder. It moved through empty air as my shoulder shifted aside and landed flat on my right breast. Shock ran up and down my spine— not my own, but my sister's. I saw Klein, hand on my chest, face just beginning to register shock at his screw up.

Now, I realized that this would usually be when the girl screams, shouts and makes way more of a deal out of such a thing than she really should. Of course, she may even attack the man. Seeing as Diabel was here, that may have been the course of action I should take. However, I also considered that said guy would then, undoubtedly be attacked by everyone else in the vicinity as well. Seeing as this town had no protection, I really didn't feel like getting Klein killed.

So, I brushed his hand away while he started stuttering apologies. "Hey Klein, you're ok! That's good." I nodded as he started staring dumbly at my totally unconcerned expression. "I guess you came here when you heard about the whole 'a demon going to destroy everything' thing, right?"

His mouth flapped for a few seconds. Then I saw the light in his eye. That told me he'd remembered I was actually a guy and after a breath of relief, he responded, now at ease himself, "Yeah, we heard about that. In particular, we heard about a pair of 'twin beauties' that accidentally provoked a giant wolf demon into attacking the town." He raised an eyebrow, as if to say, 'I totally know it was you guys.'

"Ah, you pegged us. It was those wolves. They brought us there and basically pushed us through the quest until we got him the crystal he needed. Luckily, we got away before he transformed or he would have totally eaten us!" We both laughed, then exchanged greetings over a quick handshake.

Through the whole conversation, I could feel Keiko's embarrassment, turn to anger, turn to confusion from behind me. That was when I figured it was safe to turn back and introduce Diabel to the man who had helped us on our second day(and first, for that matter). However, he didn't follow the same series of emotions she did.

When our eyes met, he was fuming. "Ack," I let out a small squeak.

Diabel glowered speaking in a dangerous tone, "How dare you dirty the honor of such an innocent woman?" Klein shot me a questioning glance, wanting to know why this stranger was so angry. I answered with a wry smile that said I hadn't told him yet. I could see Klein blanch after that one.

To help out, I stepped between them. "Diabel, what are you talking about?" I quickly decided which way I wanted to go with this. "What's «Honor»? I haven't seen it in the status menu anywhere..." purposely trailing off as I opened my menu to emphasis my point. My 'clueless' act seemed to be helping, because some of Diabel's anger abated.

"I wasn't talking about something like that..." he sighed, then suddenly heated again, "I was talking about her chastity!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. My eye twitched. Really, _chastity_? Did he really have to use _that_ word? And shout it as loud as he could? I was sure I could feel an actual giant sweat-drop rolling down the back of my head for a moment there.

So, I tried a different tack. "Oh, so that's what you meant?" I said. My mind raced for a moment, something, something... having to wear a skirt! My cheeks instantly turned red as if I wasn't embarrassed about something totally unrelated. I shuffled my feet for a moment and looked down. Counted off, one— two— and went on. "I don't feel like my—" did I seriously have to say it like this? "—chastity has been dirtied. So it should be ok, ne~?" ending with a girlishly cute sound and trying to keep my eye from twitching again. Keiko, who had been able to listen to the internal monologue accompanying this display was fighting to suppress her laughter.

I could see Diabel melt immediately. —Oh jeez, I hope I never get toyed with by a woman like this...

We moved on, now with Klein, and his men trailing a short distance behind. It was getting terribly crowded in the small town. No way had it ever been intended to house so many players at once. The crowds tried to part for our group, since we were pretty well known to them by now,(considering that we were the reason they were all here) but there was little room for them to even move aside and we had to fight our way to the edge of town.

Past a small grove of trees, there was a slightly less crowded clearing with a number of low boulders to sit on. These had been occupied by players who appeared exceedingly well off when compared to the rest of the crowd.

With a wave of his hand, the spiky haired man with his strange bandana had the rest of his group hold back while he continued on with us. We passed through the crowd and moved into the area with the rocks. Closer now, I could see they were in a rough approximation of a circle. While numerous people rested against the sides and backs, only a few sat facing inward. Their expressions ranged from strangely smug to really freaked out.

The clearing between the rocks, that's to say, the diameter of the circle they created, appeared to be just over one meter. Having everyone's legs hanging into the middle made it seem even smaller. This created the impression of everyone sitting around a small table. It was obviously the strategy meeting Diabel had said we were heading to.

So this is what a strategy meeting looks like...

We all sat down together, Diabel on the left, then Keiko, myself, and Klein squeezing in to the far right. With that, all the rocks in the small circle were occupied. This seemed to serve as the signal for the meeting to begin.

Diabel spoke up immediately. "Before we start, I would like to introduce everyone to Rai," gesturing to Keiko, then extended his hand further, "and Rei. These are the two who completed the original quest which spawned the Boss."

I whispered from the corner of my mouth, "What's a boss?"

Klein answered in kind. "Super strong monsters. Like that boar. They have 'The' at the beginning of their name." I nodded slightly.

"Since they don't know anyone here, it would be helpful for everyone to introduce themselves."

They went around the circle clockwise, everyone introducing themselves in order. I paid close attention to their names, since these were the people who had the plans and would rise to the top soon(if not already). They would be good people to know later on. In order, they were: Master Throne, Johnny Black, Heathcliff, Kengo, PoH, River, Red-Eyed Xaxa, and Yuu. Klein introduced himself last, since he was right at my side. I mentally tacked each name to their face.

But then I noticed something. If I focused directly on one of them, a little green diamond hovered over their head. It'd always been there before, but I had never really paid it any mind. Now however, it drew my attention, because I also noticed that a faint scrawl of text was written next to it. Their name was at the top, listed clearly now. However, the rest of the text was nearly invisible and I couldn't actually read any of it. Below, I could see their health bar.

This was really going to be helpful. Besides simply remembering them, I could look at them and be reminded of their name. I glanced around at some random bystanders. However, despite the faint green object floating above them, there was nothing. My happiness waned slightly. So, I had to already know who they were before the system would help me. I couldn't just look at them and know.

With introductions concluded, Diabel again had us recount a (massively) simplified version of the quest which had released the demon. After that, they moved on with the meeting. They talked about guard shifts and designating squadrons to be on guard and how to rotate shifts...

It wasn't long before my thoughts were wandering. I'd thought that the people playing this game had chosen names like real life. However, with the introduction of these commanders, I now saw that was not true at all. In that case, how was I supposed to call them? Would it still be polite to add a -san after a name like 'Red-eyed Xaxa'? Despite the mix of normal and strange names, there had been something tugging at the edge of my thoughts. I finally managed to catch it, and realized that I actually recognized one of the names. Heathcliff was that guy we met yesterday just after logging in!

While this felt like a great accomplishment for a moment, I then sighed at the fact that I'd nearly forgotten in the first place. It was around this time that they were discussing whether to use two or three-man parties to patrol the perimeter. Across the circle, River straightened for a moment before tapping something in midair, clearly invisible to the rest of us.

"Everyone, look at this," he interrupted. He tapped something else and a window appeared in midair. He grabbed it as if it was actually a pane of glass and held it out for everyone to see. We all leaned in. It was a message, but it didn't say anything; It was all just a bunch of random letters and symbols, as if the sender had hit his keyboard a few times, then hit send.

"This seems... somehow ominous..." PoH said slowly from the next seat over.

No one else spoke for a moment as PoH looked meaningfully at the young man next to him.

Author's note: You see what I did thar? XD


	21. Chapter 21

**Big Trouble**** Chapter 21**

Author's note: *Facepalms* Well, I was very wrong with part of the menu. Turns out the last icon isn't for stats and such, but maps and quests. In episode 11, which just came out, there's a moment where they actually show the menu when Asuna's on that screen. *Dies* I'm confused now, where the hell do they actually keep their character stats in the menu then? Mmmmmmm...

While PoH spoke, I noticed a dark shape move up out of the woods. Something like a bird. It passed in front of the sun, which still shone through the gap between here and the next floor above our heads. I saw something move off to the side which caught my attention for a moment. I glanced back to PoH and River in time to notice something out of place. PoH was looking at River with a worried look.

_Snap—_ A massive jaw closed on River. The of the beast it belonged to seemed to materialize in the middle of the field. Only the tiniest afterimage told me it had fallen from high above. I could see PoH's eyes go wide in shock. With the sound of breaking glass, River's avatar— no. That was actually River. The man before me shattered with a wavering blue light and a flourish of tiny glowing polygons. River was gone. I didn't even know him, but now he was gone. Dead in both this world and the real one.

My eyes moved and my brain registered the information in a moment, automatically, without me even thinking about it. Six health bars.『The Harrowing Fang』. The wolf seemed to vanish as fast as it had appeared, but I caught the slight blur that told me it had actually jumped over us, heading toward the town. After this moment, everyone shot to their feet at once. Everyone except PoH, who stared into the empty space where River had been.

My eyes flashed around the clearing. There were already many shouts exploding all around us. It was so much that it drowned out any sound that may have come from the village. I finally caught sight of fur moving out of the forest. The wolves tore out of the forest and into the crowded clearing, many engagements popping up with the clash of steel and claw.

However, the lightning fast attack caught the panicked players off guard and I saw many flashes of light, along with the shattering polygons and the terrible sound of breaking glass. I drew my sword from the scabbard at my waist. There were no wolves immediately in front of me, but I would not allow my life to end by being caught flat-footed like that. I stood atop the rock I had been using for a seat, pressing back to back with Keiko.

There were already many more wolves in the small clearing than the pack we saw the day before. Despite the huge crowd of players, it seemed that most were inexperienced and didn't know how to fight against the ferocious animals. So, they fell one after another to the merciless attacks. If fact, having so many of players was more of a burden, because no one couldn't move around well enough to fight.

Somehow, after going through one crazy situation after another, I felt somewhat calm in this situation. I considered our chances in this fight. The wolves were only coming from the forest in front of us now, toward the mountain. However, that didn't mean they weren't going to attack from the sides as well. The town behind us was sure to be in shambles with the sudden attack.

It was strange, I contemplated fighting with the players here or going to help in the city. I actually considered what would be a better option, as if I, the person who couldn't even read my own stats, could possibly make a reasonable choice of which battle I should join. And yet, I felt like I could. Looking around at the scared faces of everyone around me, it seemed that I had learned a good deal about fighting in this world, even moreso than all these competent, long-time gamers.

Without thinking about it, I opened my menu and switched the the party section. I dragged a party invite to the people closest to me. The signature ringing bells seemed to snap these players, supposedly the best players among us, out of their daze. When they saw the party invitation appear in front of them, Klein and Diabel accepted immediately.

"We're going to go fight the boss," I declared. By my estimation, we would need the strongest players to beat it. If we couldn't beat the boss, the rest of these wolves wouldn't matter because we would all be dead anyway. Heathcliff looked me up and down for a few moments, then accepted as well, with just a nod. The others shook their heads, saying they needed to stay and protect the field.

As we moved away from the fighting, Klein's group pushed their way toward us, apparently having waited for him to make his move. We joined up and he explained our plan in shorthand while we continued to push through. As soon as we cleared the field, walking quickly through the short stretch of tree-cover, a hand closed over my arm.

I turned back to see who it was, and found Heathcliff behind me. I raised an eyebrow as we all came to a stop. "Before we fight such a monster, we need to be fully prepared. That means we have to go to the tailor and get you two some armor first. With the inclusion of my sister, I realized that he had grabbed her shoulder as well.

"Everyone else here has some sort of armor, but you two really need some. It would be extremely unwise to fight such a strong monster without any protection. I can speak for everyone here— we don't want to lose you in this fight." All the rest of the men nodded solemnly.

I thought about it for a moment. Every second we delayed, that monster was still rampaging through the city. However, we would be no help fighting it if we just died. I nodded back to them. "Ok, let's get all set up before we go in."

To make up for lost time, we all ran for the town, but Keiko and I quickly pulled away from everyone, so we had to slow down, moving at, for us, little more than a leisurely pace.

"How much AGI do you guys have?" asked a man from Klein's group. AGI... «Agility», I figured. With a swipe of my hand and a tap on the status icon, my character stats came up.

"14 points," I informed them.

A number of them gaped, then one asked, "What level are you?"

My eyes shifted back up, landing on the first bit of information in the window. "Level 5," I answered. Then, I scanned down a bit. I was at 40000/60000 exp to level up again. That meant 20000 more points. That could take quite a bit of time.

"Wait, level 5 with 14 AGI. That means you only have 1 STR?" Klein asked, looking astonished.

I nodded, then my brow furrowed. "Is that a bad thing? At the time, we put all our points into «Agility» so we could run away from those wolves. Turned out we needed every point," I explained. Now that I thought about my low «Strength» stat, I remembered that sword from before. The one I didn't have enough strength to carry.

"Hey, I have this sword that I can't use," I started. "Since you all raised your «Strength» more, do you want to use it? It's called the «Wolf-Tooth Sword»." I saw all eyes go wide. "What?"

"T,that's a super rare monster drop! It's on the level of the «Anneal Blade»," Klein informed me. Not that I really know what that meant... "I would definitely take you up on that offer, but I use curved swords. I glanced over to Heathcliff. He used a straight sword.

"I must decline." he bowed slightly. Then my gaze moved to Diabel. "Diabel-san?"

He gulped before bowing low, "I,it would be an honor!" We all stopped momentarily while I pulled the sword from my inventory window and it materialized in midair. I took hold of it to pass the weapon to Diabel, but fell forward on my face when the weight of it came down on my outstretched hands.

"Ack, ow, I forgot how heavy it is." I winced as I stood up again, hauling the sword up after me with both arms. I swear it felt like it weighed two-hundred pounds. I slid the sword forward, resting the end of the sheath on the ground, until Diabel reached out and took it in his right hand. He unsheathed the blade easily and held it up to inspect it closely. I stared in wonder as he held the sword up which I couldn't even stand with, in just one hand.

"Well, use that in the coming fight. Every bit of help is welcome," Keiko spoke from the other side of Diabel. We all moved forward again, at the same pace as before. We cleared the trees and the town came into view. We had two parties. Our party of five contained Keiko and myself, Diabel, Klein, and Heathcliff. The other was a party of six, Klein's men.

We crossed the short stretch of grass to come to the closest building and looked down the street. There were still a lot of players, but they were all shouting and panicking. I heard much louder screams, along with a horrifying sound like a car crashing through a shop of mirrors.

The tailor was straight down the road ahead of us, but we spread all our potions evenly before moving from our cover and heading into the city.

Author's note: I'm going to have a lot less free time, so my updates are definitely going to slow down. :(

On a happier note, from what I've seen from episode 11 of the anime, it'll definitely be longer than 12 episodes! ^_^ Unless they screw up the ending. :(


	22. Chapter 22

**Dangerous... Shopping?**** Chapter 22**

We broke into the crowd and pushed our way through slowly. Actually inside the crowd now, the apparent panic from afar revealed itself to be more orderly than I thought. While everyone was shouting and shuffling around, at least no one was swinging their weapons wildly or running around and hurting each other. As we pressed further, the crowd suddenly thickened. I grinned when I realized how easy girls had it sometimes. Keiko and I fell into step behind Heathcliff, letting him shoulder his way through the crowd and moved through the gap he made.

Then, we broke into a tight ring, where one of the giant wolves had been isolated. It's hp was near the middle of its second bar, but the boy facing off against it wasn't in the best condition. I focused my vision on him to see that his health was already in the yellow zone. His double-headed ax was held feebly in his hands and he was panting heavily.

The wolf lunged for the too-young player, claws lashing out. Before I knew it, Heathcliff lurched forward, catching the attack on his small shield. He swiped inward with «Horizontal» and the wolf kicked backward before the attack landed. Klein was holding his short curved sword up as it started to glow red. He flicked his blade downward and shot forward, the way I'd seen him attack back when he jumped in front of that boar.

His attack drew a line of red light in the air behind him as he almost seemed to fly across the ground toward the wolf. The beast saw it coming though and turned to its new assailant. It snarled and jutted its head out to bite into Klein's midsection. Already in the middle of a Sword Skill, Klein couldn't do much to dodge. However, he managed to kick off the ground so missed the wolf's fangs and instead crashed into the top of its head. He went tumbling over the animal and hit the ground, rolling back to his feet. His attack hadn't hit the mark, but he hadn't taken any damage either.

With a few words, Heathcliff had the ax user step out of the battle. Now with the tight field cleared of bystanders, Heathcliff shot forward, blocking another rake of claws with his shield. He swung a «Slant» down toward the wolf, which ducked aside again. This time, Klein was much too close for it to see his next attack coming from the flank. His sword sliced through its hind leg and a good chunk of the wolf's second remaining bar was reduced.

Diabel rushed into the field then, coming down with a «Vertical» before the wolf recovered from the first blow. He cut into its side and dropped most of the remaining second bar. A moment later, claws whirled and swiped across Diabel's chest. He fell backward, a quarter of his hp dropping from the sudden attack. Klein brought his sword up for another attack, but the wolf swung its head in his direction next and he had to jump backward to dodge a bite from its monster fangs.

Diabel pushed back to his feet, already throwing his head back to down a potion. He moved back into the fray, bringing his shield up to block another attack as his motion drew the wolf's attention. Klein and Heathcliff used this opportunity to take out more of its health. It dropped to half of its last bar and turned to Heathcliff again. He raised his shield to block, but the monster charged, running into him full on. Heathcliff stood his ground, taking the charge right in the center of his shield his feet slid backward slightly, then dug in. He shifted downward for a moment, then used his shield to throw the wolf upward, knocking both the wolf and himself greatly off balance.

The other two through themselves into the wolf, cutting away the rest of its health before it could recover, and ending the fight. A 『Result』window informed me that, unsurprisingly, I hadn't gained anything from the fight. I stepped into the clearing and said, "gotta keep moving," loud enough for my party to hear me over the shouts of congratulations and thanks.

We pushed back into the crowd, Heathcliff shouting to be heard. "We have to be careful, while fighting enemies, surrounding them like that is usually a bad choice. While it happens to work somewhat against wolves like that, many enemies grow stronger the more players challenge it at once. Also, if not for its huge size, we wouldn't even have enough room to execute sword skills if we tried to crowd around like that. From now on, we should «Switch» instead. It's much more effective." When Klein asked what «Switch» was, he explained that we fight one at a time, then create an opening and switch places allowing another party member to exploit to deal much greater damage.

We continued down the road during this shouted conversation, slowly nearing the tailor shop. From what I could hear, it sounded like the Boss was ahead to the left somewhere. At least, that's where I continued to hear the constant sound of shattering glass.

Down the road a ways, there was a much larger circle, this one containing two wolves which were quickly decimating the hp bars of the mace and staff wielder who opposed them. Again, Heathcliff charged in first, knocking the first wolf aside with a smashing attack from his shield and parrying the other's attack with his sword. Diabel moved in second this time, with Klein backing him up. Heathcliff drove the other wolf toward us, forcing it back with a series of jabs from his blade. I gripped my sword tighter and could feel Keiko's breath come faster from next to me. We would be «Switching» with Heathcliff any second now.

A flourish of his sword, followed by a devastating uppercut with the flat of his shield sent the enormous wolf sprawling backward. Its front paws came up off the ground, causing it to flail as it tried not to fall over. "«Switch»!" With a quick exhalation of breath, I could feel my movements synchronize with Keiko's as we lunged forward. A hail of sword skills flashed from each of us, cutting into the wolf as it tried to regain its balance and get all its paws on the ground. We cut away a full half of its hp before it could regain its footing.

The beast rounded on us, but our linked determination didn't waver. We hadn't created an opening, but Heathcliff still stood behind the wolf. "«Switch»!" we called together. Our partner slashed a «Vertical» straight into the wolf's back. When it spun to face the new attacker, I swiped out with a foot and kicked out one of its legs. Like our fight on the cliff, the wolf lost its balance and opened it up to another harrowing slash from Heathcliff.

He brought his shield across the wolf's face and called "«Switch»!" again. The rapid fire switching really worked wonders to keep this wolf off balance and unable to fight back, I realized. Another series of sword skills, and the wolf shattered into another shower of tiny little lights. The other beast took a little while longer to go down. With a little more pushing, we made our way to the tailor's shop and entered the establishment.

Surprisingly, the inside was empty. Had it not occurred to anyone that the shops were still here, even with monsters attacking the town? When the door swung closed behind us, the chaotic noise from the mob outside vanished. Diabel moved to the counter and spoke with the NPC momentarily. Heathcliff stood against a wall and opened his menu as well, then started tapping away at the invisible window. He muttered something about a cardinal being too excited. Maybe he was worried about his bird in the real world?

Klein, Keiko, and I talked to the NPC and brought up the shopping window. Klein explained about how armor worked. The basic «Defence» stat helped against direct damage, then the resistances to stop poison, paralysis, and such. Also, they all had weight, so one would need to be strong enough to hold an entire set of armor. According to some beta testers, some armor gave bonuses to various stats, though the only one confirmed so far was health, though it was mostly limited to heavier armor like plate-mail.

For us, he recommended leather armor, though that was mostly because it was the lightest and we had built our characters for speed. When I asked what he meant, he explained that heavier armor restricted movement speed and jumping ability. Of course, with just one point of STR, we probably wouldn't be able to equip anything heavier. So, we used the shop filter to show only leather armor. There were a number of things and he ran us down the list, explaining.

Leather helmets weren't really worth their weight in defense, bracers covered the user's forearms, shoulder pads were pretty good, shin guards were a bit iffy, but ok as long as you had the money. Of course, the leather vest was the best, he explained while tapping his own. This town's tailor also sold a leather coat. It was pretty expensive, but totally worth it if you could afford one.

Thinking about it, armor would be a lot heavier than other things, and we might not actually have enough space in our inventory to hold it. "Hey, how do we sell things? We have a ton of stuff that I don't really know what it is."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Mmmm, like leathers and stuff..." I opened my inventory window and hit the button in the bottom corner to show the window. In fact, I had even more stuff now than when I checked last. Probably from the second wolf we killed. That left our inventory 90% full.

"These are generally considered trash mats. Some are useful sometimes, but usually you just sell them to the shops to make a bit more Col. There's a tab at the top of the shop window that will switch it from buying to selling."

I tapped the button and my inventory appeared in the shop window. Keiko did the same, and we went down the list selling everything. As I went, I noticed we had another «Wolf-Tooth Sword» now, which I skipped.

Done selling everything else, our inventory now contained just our clothes, swords, and the one extra item. That put us at 10% capacity. All the items had increased our Col by a small amount, considering how much we already had. We now sat just a couple Col below 18000.

When we switched back to the buying section of the shop and checked the price of armor, it nearly made me laugh. The leather vest cost all of 300 Col. Two full sets of armor(minus the helmet) later, we spent just 1400 Col. Of course, all this armor took up a 60% of our inventory, leaving just 30% free space. I eyed our huge sum of money remaining and bought two leather coats. At 500 Col each, they cost two-thirds of the entire rest of the set, but when I glanced at the stats, they seemed nearly as high as everything else put together.

Before we closed the shop window, Heathcliff approached. "There's just one more thing. You should also wear a skirt," he said to me. My mouth didn't work for a few moments after that. Did he really just tell me to wear a skirt? Why? How could that possibly even matter? Of course, that's what came out of my mouth once I got it working again.

"You two are twins, so if you equip all the same items, you will look identical. If you are identical, the boss will delay in attacking because it won't be able to tell which of you to attack. Even if it creates a slight delay, every little bit helps." My mouth hung open at that one. I'd never imagined anyone giving such a rational, logical, reason for someone to wear a skirt before. Usually it was just something like—

"Besides, you look better in a skirt than pants." I blinked when I heard someone say my next thought out loud. It was Klein. He stuck his tongue out and gave a knowing smile.

"You..." I gave him a menacing look and held my fist up, gritting my teeth.

"He's right, you look very beautiful in a skirt you know," Diabel added.

"But, you haven't even seen me in a skirt!" I cried. I didn't count that torn up mess of clothing last night. To answer that one, he pointed at Keiko and grinned. "Good point," I replied grudgingly. I glanced at Keiko, who was now giving me "please!" puppy dog eyes, I sighed. If everyone wanted it that much... But moreso if it would actually help in the coming fight, as Heathcliff said, I would do it.

I turned back to the shop window and went to the clothing section, finding the same black cloth skirt that Keiko was wearing. I hit the instant equip button instead of the regular buy button, and I immediately felt the warm air touch my bare thighs. At least it saved me from having to take off my clothes again. I tried to suppress the urge to shiver from the creepy feeling as the bright light faded and I now stood, completely identical to my sister again.

I after a short moment, I felt another strange feeling. It was as if I suddenly became lighter. My head spun for a moment as I took a breath. "Woah." Came from most of the people around us. When we asked what, they said that our names had disappeared. Heathcliff being the only one not surprised, explained.

"Even real life twins have tiny details which were different, but here, due to the simplification of our bodies, there is absolutely no way of telling them apart. So, if we cannot tell the difference between them, we do not know which is which. So, the system isn't going to tell us."

"Wow, that's kind of creepy," Klein said. Diabel nodded.

"That may be, but we should hurry to defeat the boss. Once you equip your new armor, we'll head out." Heathcliff nodded to us. My hands now traced the menu without hesitation. I tapped from one menu to the next and threw on all my new armor in a few moments.

I stretched, turning sideways and bending over. While I felt a little heavier, it seemed that the armor didn't impede my movement in any way. I exchanged a glance with Keiko.

"Ok, ready," we said together.


	23. Chapter 23

**Wolves**** Chapter 23**

Author's note: uwwaaa, I forgot to add this chapter after uploading it to the site! Sorry about that!

The moment we opened the door to the street, chaos rushed back into our ears. We pressed back through the swarm of bodies again, heading straight toward the loudest sounds of combat. Thankfully, I no longer heard the constant ring of shattering glass that would accompany many deaths. We encountered a couple more isolated wolves as we moved, but Heathcliff and Klein finished them off quickly. Klein even leveled up.

Then we ran into a problem, or should I say, lots of problems. A pack of wolves was moving through the town, cutting a path of destruction through the players in their way. When we came close, a few wolves lunged our way. They met with a flurry of sword skills and fell back, losing much of their hp. Somehow, I felt much stronger now. I'm not sure what it was, maybe the reassurance of the armor on my back, but I felt more capable than before.

We dove onto the stunned wolves hacked into their life again before they could recover. They attacked back fiercely, but their hp was reduced too much from our first attacks and we took them down after just a few more exchanges. Everyone was surrounded by golden light as many 『Level Ups』appeared above us.

"Now this is what I call power leveling!" Klein shouted.

"Oh!" all of his men responded. I was about to open my menu to increase my stats, but the rest of the wolf pack was not pleased with us killing their comrades. The swarm charged at us, and we joined the next fight. For the first time, we were outnumbered. There were two wolves for each of us, so we would have to be much more careful. While «Switching» was our advantage before, now it would be theirs.

However, I somehow didn't find it to be much of a problem. Even fighting apart from Keiko, my blade cut through the air decisively, quickly cutting through half of the wolf's hp. It changed places with the other and I got to work parrying its strikes and counterattacking with powerful attacks of my own. I'd realized that the faster and harder I swung my sword when I used a sword skill, the more effective it was. So, I didn't just let the system assist take over when I attacked, I actively threw myself into my attacks and it obviously paid off.

The resting wolf was regaining hp, but that didn't concern me, as it was nowhere near as fast as me cutting through its friend. Payback time, I thought to myself. I ducked a flash of it's claws and kicked out the wolf's other leg, causing it to fall to the ground. This gave me the chance to really let loose. A chain of «Horizontal», «Slant», «Slant», «Uppercut», and «Vertical» reduced the wolf to nothing more than a shower of lights. I immediately charged forward, my sword glowing red with my next sword skill.

I finished off the second wolf even faster than the first. It seemed that the more I fought, not only my character was getting stronger, but myself. I turned in time to see Keiko block an incoming slash, and finish off her attacker with a quick «Uppercut». Heathcliff was also finished already. Klein and Diabel struck the final blows to their enemies moments later. Finally, Klein's men cleaned up the remaining wolves. The『Result』screen appeared again, and this time I had the chance to look at it. 『Exp 72000』, 『Col 20000』, 『Items 0』. My eyebrows furrowed, "Isn't that a bit too much..." I mumbled, then the golden light appeared around everyone again.

"Woah, do you guys see how much exp these wolves give? There's no way that's balanced!" Klein said with look of amazement. "That was like killing more than a thousand of those boars!"

"That's strange, they don't seem all that strong. In theory, their attacks are strong and fast, and their hp high, but they don't have much defense so their hp is easy to reduce. They also lose their balance easily and are susceptible to «Switching»." Diabel made the keen observation and we all nodded.

"Well, is it that they're weak, or are we strong?" one of Klein's men asked.

"No way, the kind of exp these guys give is from like ten floors up or something," Klein countered.

"That's the weird thing, no one else seems like they can fight them, but we aren't having any trouble," the same man shot back.

"Whatever the case, we must stop this attack soon, before the town is overrun," Heathcliff changed the subject and got us all moving again. We had knocked out a pretty big group of wolves, so the crowd who had been trying to get away flooded the area. Consequently, it thinned out the crowd ahead. We rushed forward, searching for the boss.

"Everyone, we've leveled up and should distribute our points," Heathcliff advised. So, we slowed, but didn't have the time to stop. We advanced at a walk while all opening our menus. I brought up my stats and checked the important information. 『Level 9』I had 161500 exp and needed 180000 to level up again. A little less than 20000 points. Because of the crazily imbalanced rewards, that would just take another wolf or two.

I checked my available points from leveling up and was surprised to find I had twelve more already. I put four points into strength, more than enough to use that spare «Wolf-Tooth Sword». The other eight went into agility, so I had twenty-two points. My body felt lighter again as I took a deep breath.

It really was amazing. They were just some numbers, but they made a real difference in how strong I felt. Before, my sword had felt like just that, a sword. Now it felt like little more than a stick in my grasp, it felt so light. Noticing how low my health seemed, I drank a potion. I still had 948 hp from when I'd woken up that morning, but my maximum was all the way up at 1644 hp now.

Then, I switched to my items menu, to find it flooded with items again. Wow, I hadn't picked up any items from that last fight, but apparently Keiko was getting a ton of them. We were only 60% full now though, probably because we had more strength, so we could carry more now. Then my eyes continued scanning down and I gaped when I saw that instead of an extra «Wolf-Tooth Sword», I now had five. So, her crazy luck worked for picking up rare items? I had to chuckle at that one. I sure wouldn't have any issue finding new weapons.

Everyone else was done already, looking at me laughing to myself. Klein raised an eyebrow. "Oh," I squeaked when I saw them looking at me. "Keiko, do you have at least four «Strength» now?" She nodded and I said, "New sword."

"Oh, right," she said quietly as we both pulled one of the swords to our equipment and equipped them immediately. We drew the new sword at the same time and everyone gaped even more than a moment ago.

"J,just how many of those do you have?" Klein stuttered out in a loud voice.

"Well, umm, five right now?"

"Huh, I wonder if the drop rate is bugged," Heathcliff said in a low voice.

I shook my head and answered, "probably not," which made him raise an eyebrow, but I didn't really feel like explaining now. We had more important things to do. Like saving the lives of all the players in this town. "Let's keep going."

We ran forward, now able to move due to the lighter crowd. Everyone else was moving the other way, so it was pretty obvious this was the right direction. The boss would definitely be here.


	24. Chapter 24

**A Boss, or...**** Chapter 24**

Players rushed past us, impeding our movement, but we pushed through until they had all cleared out. We turned the next corner and finally found the boss. The same giant, dark gray monster from a little while ago and our target in order to protect this town and save the reinforcements-turned-casualties:『The Harrowing Fang』.

When we came into view, a number of heavily armored players were holding it off, but they all had hp in the yellow already. They were quickly switching out, one after another, and taking potions in an attempt to keep up their quickly draining hp.

"Go!" I shouted when I saw the deadly situation these men were in. We all charged, but Keiko and I flashed across the gap before anyone else could make it more than a few meters. Of the monster's five hp bars, four remained; at least the players before us had managed to injure it. Keiko and I brought up our swords to preform a «Slant» and leaped into the air. However, I held my attack back while the glowing orange light wrapped around my blade. I waited until—

The wolf rounded so fast I could hardly see it move, but I executed my attack, metal clashing with the razor sharp claws it flung my way. The blow landed high, sending me spinning backward. So, I used the spin and flicked my wrist, activating «Uppercut», even while upside-down. My sword flashed through the flank of the wolf and I continued the spin, landing right back to my feet, opposite of where I started.

Keiko was already there, raising her sword for the next attack. However, its attacks came much faster than those of the regular monsters. The wolf blurred into motion again and I ducked, using my control over Keiko to have her follow my lead. Its claws grazed over our heads and we countered with twin «Uppercuts». The rest of our party finally arrived on the other side of the boss and dove at it with their swords held high.

The wolf reared back and let out a vicious howl. I could feel a force wash over my body and suddenly everyone else was thrown back. They were all pushing up from the ground when the wolf opened its mouth again. This time, it spoke in a deep, grating voice.

"Bwuahaha, Blessed Twins, you have returned. How nice, now I get to tear you to shreds and rid myself of you forever." It's face stretched into a wide, wolf-like sneer.

"First, why do you keep calling us 'Blessed Twins'?" I asked in a loud voice. If this monster wouldn't tell us anything, we would just kill it as planned, but if it gave us some information too, all the better.

It cackled in response, "You don't even know of your origins, how wonderful. I'll tell you then, just so I can see the looks on your faces as you lay dying at my feet!" It cackled again with its unnerving canine sneer.

"A long time ago, there were two priestesses, beautiful twins. They traveled all over, vanquishing monsters and demons. I, however, was a glorious King. I ruled with great power over my subjects and was fabulously wealthy. One day, the twins came to my territory, so I laid a trap. When sprung, they were seriously injured. However, when I closed in for the kill, those deceitful wretches rose and fought back."

"They were too gravely injured to kill me, so they sealed my true power in a crystal and closed it inside a temple, forever protected by their spirits," flecks of slobber shot off as it growled deeper, the longer it spoke. I have waited centuries to finally meet the reincarnated wretches. And finally the day has come! I will slaughter you and retake my position as king of all I survey!"

With its final words, the huge wolf lunged toward me. —_Fast!_ I lurched sideways and hit the ground to avoid the attack, feeling its claws sheer through the tail of my leather coat. I rolled back to my feet and brought my sword up, but the monster barreled into the side of thee building that had been behind me, causing dust to shoot up into the air around us. I glanced sideways for my friends, but they were all standing far enough away to not be in the battle.

What are they doing? I turned my attention back the fight in time to see the wolf turn about. It lashed out again and I went tumbling to avoid. Shooting back to my feet, I floated sideways before landing next to Keiko. I shot another look at my friends, but this time I saw the problem. The dust had drifted over to them— but not quite. There was a clear indication from where the dust stopped that there was a sort of invisible wall. Wonderful, they can't get in here to help us, I thought sarcastically.

"Do we have a plan?" Keiko asked.

"Just don't get hit," I replied. "Just keep fighting until we win." Even as I prepared for battle, my thoughts were still going over what this monster had said.

The story was simple enough. The twins sealed a demon, so it got pissed. Obviously, we weren't really incarnations of those twins, because this was just a game(however sick and twisted of a game it had become). However, it probably had to do with that skill. «Blessed Twins».

By using that skill, we were connected to the supposed back-story of those twins in this game. And, it only now occurred to me that those statues at that temple, they weren't statues of a goddess in different armor, with different weapons. They were actually the two twins. It made perfect sense now. Especially how we had eventually gotten inside. If the building was protected by the twins, the only ones who could get in would be us, with the skill that connected us to them.

That, of course, made this all my fault. Keiko's luck would have had us avoid that quest indefinitely, but mine drew us into it immediately. Thinking about the timing, those wolves probably came running for us the moment we stepped into the field that day. Of course, I shouldn't have been so wrapped up in my thoughts during a battle. I was only pulled back to the dire situation when I felt my body jerk sideways. Then, I realized the wolf had lunged again and Keiko had forced me to dive sideways with her.

I rolled sideways, putting my feet back under me and standing while I staggered to the side. "It lunges when we're too far away. That doesn't give us a chance to counter. We're going to have to move in close. One person blocks, the other attacks." Keiko laid out the battle plan with a look of focus that I hadn't seen on her before.

"Right." I nodded. Focus, you can't avoid to not pay attention, I chastised myself. I took a deep breath and raised my sword with renewed energy. "Ready." We dashed forward, closing on the wolf before it started its next big lunging attack.

Now in close combat, it changed to swiping at us with its claws. Actually, there wasn't much else it could do. It only had two paws and a set of teeth. We stood together in front of it, so that didn't leave many options for it to attack. It swiped in from the left and Keiko blocked while I slashed at its chest(it was so tall my sword couldn't reach its neck). It attacked from the right, and I blocked so Keiko could attack.

It went on and on, block and attack, block and attack. It wasn't even hard to see where the attack would come from. Right before it attacked, it would lift the paw it was going to use for a moment. If it hesitated too long between attacks, we figured it was going to try to bite. In that case, we both ducked as it head shot out, then hacked at it neck until it retreated again.

We steadily reduced its fourth bar, then the third, then second. Seriously, if this guy was this weak, no wonder why those imaginary twins in the past had beaten him, even while gravely wounded. We'd only been here a couple days and he couldn't even touch us! So much for an unstoppable monster. Of course, that left the question: why hadn't anyone else been able to fight it? He was even weaker than that giant boar!

Whatever the case, we just had to wrap up this fight. We finished its second bar, leaving just one more. However, as soon as it hit that point, the wolf reared up into the air, letting out an earsplitting howl. We covered our ears and stumbled away, gaining some space before it did... whatever it was about to do. It stomped back down to the ground, and I immediately felt that familiar not-quite-pain unpleasant feeling that meant pain, to indicate I'd taken damage. It was just a little bit, but it was good to know that ground-stomps were considered attacks. I'd be sure to jump to avoid getting hit in the future.

We were about to press forward to finish this fight, the wolf started cackling again. "So, you won't just die quietly." No duh, we'd been fighting for the last, like fifteen minutes. I shook my head, whatever. This wolf was obviously not very bright. "If that's the case, it's time I get serious. I'll crush you with my full power!"

The wolf stood back up on its hind legs and I crouched, ready to jump when it stomped again. However, it didn't come back down. Crackles of electricity shot around the beast as popping sounds rang out. The arch of its back straightened, its fore legs twisted, growing longer, straighter. Its chest bulged. The monster's whole form rippled as it formed into a new shape. It rose higher as it changed, growing so tall that the invisible wall, or dome, apparently, shattered around it. It broke and shards of half-visible, reflective... stuff. They were unlike anything in reality. I might be able to compare them to glass, except they just weren't the same.

As these shards fell to the ground around us and shattered into oblivion, I reached out and grabbed one before it fell. It sat in my hand like a real object. Like an _item._ Feeling that it would vanish at any moment, I opened my menu, flashing to the item window almost before the whole menu was open, and shoved the strange shard inside. With a flash, the item, «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I» appeared at the bottom of my item list. I blinked, then grabbed out for all the other falling shards I could reach. Keiko did the same, and we managed to collect sixteen in our inventory in the few moments before they were all gone.

Of course, we didn't have time to discuss what those were, because the wolf was nearly finished transforming. It's fore legs had shifted sideways and rounded, making it look nearly human, except for the giant, unchanged wolf head atop its new shoulders. It stood on its two new legs and roared, still growing taller. As its head passed the top of the house next to it, a small, hooded figure shot up from the rooftop and dashed away.

"What the hell?" I muttered as a small part of me realized how strange that was. That was the only person still in the area besides our group. However, the rest of my focus was trained on the wolf as the transformation finished. It now looked like one of those werewolves from a monster movie, the ones that transform into something halfway between a man and a wolf.

It stood about three meters tall, just a little higher than the houses. Long, black, rough looking fur hung all down its unclothed body. It held out its hand and dark energy converged all around it, condensing in its hand, then lengthening until it took the shape of a pure, obsidian black sword.

"Guys, we're going to need some help!" I shouted back. When I looked, back, I met a strange sight. While most of my friends were rushing to our aid, one was staying back. Heathcliff was tapping away wildly at his menu with a very worried expression, sweat running down his forehead. He was tapping all over the place and kept typing into an invisible keyboard.

Klein turned back and shouted, "Oi, Heathcliff, get moving."

"One moment, I'm-" but cut short.

Klein grabbed Heathcliff by the arm, shouting "message your friends later, we have a boss to beat!"

Heathcliff started sputtering "b,but, but, the," but didn't really go anywhere with it. He was dragged into the fight as we turned back to face the newly empowered boss monster. It hefted its sword high into the air, aiming toward me and Keiko.

Heath shouted, "It's «Vertical Arc»!" I wasn't sure what that skill was, but it looked like a «Vertical», but tilted to the side some. So, I dodged sideways. The boss's sword came down where I'd been standing. Wind buffeted me from where it had swung, making me flinch from the unexpected power. However, when it reached the end of the attack, its sword hand flicked upward again and the sword flew straight toward me. I threw my own sword up to block, holding my other arm to support the back of the blade.

I felt the blow land against my blade and it was like getting hit with a small building. Its sword never touched me, but the force of the blow was on a whole different level than before. I winced as the force crashed over me, then felt my feet leave the ground. "Onii-chan!" Then, I heard a rush of air and saw the sky. My back hit the dirt and I went into a crashing tumble, skidding along the dirt and bouncing back up repeatedly, until I crashed decisively into the side of a building. "Gah!" the cry left my throat as my head cracked into the wood. I heard a dozen beeps as numerous『Immortal Object』messages appeared to tell me I couldn't destroy the building.

"Guh, ugh. Ah." I fought my shaking legs to stand again as I watched my hp bar continue to decrease. I downed a potion, but it just kept going down. "Argh," I muttered. I'd been knocked clear down the road, at least a hundred meters from the fight. If this was the real world, I would be a smear along the ground from rolling like that. That was so bad, I swear it actually hurt. Meaning that the actual pain of such a thing was totally unimaginable.

My hp dropped until it hit red before it started increasing again due to the slow-acting potion. If I didn't want to risk death, I was out of this fight. But then again, after seeing the strength of that attack, a direct hit would ensure instant death, so it didn't really matter. My sword had been completely destroyed by its powerful attack, so I quickly equipped a new one. I dashed back toward the fight, where everyone was dodging erratically, so far unable to make any sort of counterattack.

Why was this guy so strong now? He'd been a pushover earlier. What had changed? Were sword skills really _that_ much stronger than regular attacks? No, that couldn't be it, the force of its blows had been multiplied a hundred times over. This thing wasn't made for players our levels to defeat. This was so much more powerful than us, it was nearly suicidal. If it'd been in this form since the beginning, we would all be dead by now. It only had one bar of hp for us to cut through, but we would need some way to fight it first. Otherwise, there would definitely be casualties.

As I drew closer, I finally saw my allies begin a counterattack after 『The Harrowing Fang』used a powerful sword skill, which left it vulnerable afterward. I hadn't noticed it at first, but there was a delay, a moment when my body froze and I couldn't move a muscle, after using a sword skill. Apparently, higher level, stronger skills had higher delays. And while a small instant wasn't really noticeable early on, as I'd been getting stronger, I realized that a lot more could happen in such a short moment. And now that I thought about it, I felt like I was still getting stronger, even as I ran. It was a weird feeling, like my legs became lighter and I could dash faster than before.

I was halfway back to the battle when I drank another potion to continue restoring my hp. The boss had recovered and everyone was on the defensive once again. It brought down its black blade and everyone threw themselves out of the way desperately. The delay was short enough that they were just picking themselves up after the last dodge, with no chance to strike back, when it started its next sure-kill attack.

This continued as I moved closer. At this rate, if we could only strike back after a few of its attacks, surely someone would mess up and take a hit. It unleashed another powerful downward attack, the one with the long delay, and a huge slash cut into the side of a nearby building. Aren't these buildings indestructible? I thought. While everyone launched another desperate attack, Heathcliff used the time to open his menu. I watched as his shield disappeared and a new, larger one appeared on his arm.

He closed his menu, just a few moments before the boss recovered and called out, "everyone attack, I'll draw its attention!"

"Oh!" the shout resounded from the two parties. The continued to attack the monster's legs(the only part they could reach), while Heathcliff hefted his new shield. 『The Harrowing Fang』turned its blazing eyes toward the man and raised its sword again. I was nearly back to the fight when the blade came down. Heathcliff made no move to dodge and I shouted, "Move!" He took a deep breath and swung his shield, parrying the attack sideways as flashes of light and gusts of wind blew out all around him.

My mouth dropped open when I saw his powerful block. He really was one of the strongest. Finally making it back, I dashed straight to the monster and unleashed my sword skills with all my strength. Heathcliff stood his ground with a scarily serious expression. Then again, I was probably wearing the same look. Again and again, the enormous black blade crashed down against his shield and he blasted it away. I saw tiny chips coming out of his hp, but nothing dangerous. He was actually fending this boss off on his own.

With all ten of us hacking at the boss with everything we had, its hp slowly decreased. It turned yellow and continued dropping. When it only had a little bit left before it turned red, Heathcliff shouted, "get ready!" The boss's hp dropped to 20% and the color shifted to red. It suddenly let out a loud roar and raised its blade all the way up above its head. We continued our relentless assault, taking a few more percent out before it crouched low to the ground.

I hopped back the moment before I felt that it would attack, but instead it sprung upward, firing itself high into the sky. "Everyone get clear!" I heard Heathcliff shout. I didn't need to be told twice. I turned and ran for all I was worth down the road it had knocked me down earlier. I could feel Keiko heading the other way. As I continued putting distance between the monster, and consequently I felt strange. I felt like my body was weakening. But that didn't make sense. Strength here was just numbers. As long as my numbers didn't change, I shouldn't feel any different.

I halfway down the road again when I turned and stopped. A few moments later, the boss crashed to the ground again, stabbing its sword into the ground all the way to the hilt. The strike was so powerful that I saw the shockwave sweeping across the ground and jumped into the air automatically. I tried to use my influence over Keiko to have her do the same, but the link felt strangely weak. I couldn't even feel if it worked or not. Even being in the air when the force swept by, I had to cross my arms over my face as it knocked me backward.

I landed on the ground and rolled backward, but took no damage from the attack. Those who hadn't felt the stomping attack earlier hadn't avoided the shockwave and took a few more moments to recover. I immediately charged forward, passing them by, and soon everyone else followed up behind me. Even so, I quickly pulled away as I felt my strength return. I could see Keiko moving in from the other side, and we sprinted with everything we had at the still-recovering boss. It was down on a knee, putting its head within reach. Surely, we would deal more damage that way. Strangely, I also noticed a crowd moving down the street toward the battle, approaching behind Keiko and Klein.

I brought my sword up level with my body. I was going to use «Vertical» when I came closer, but instead instead my sword began glowing a green color. A new sword skill?! I knew nothing of this skill, except that it started from a lower position. My sword was pointed from the center of my body, downward slightly.

I would have stopped the skill, thinking that any skill I started by chance would end badly, except I'd taken that position on purpose while charging. Even if I didn't know I would trigger a sword skill, I had been in a position that felt natural while charging toward an enemy. Hopefully, that meant this skill would continue that charge. I had seen Klein use charge-type skills before, but didn't know any with a straight sword. Besides, the boss was still recovering, so there was no real danger in using it.

With that in mind, I continued the charge, my sword glowing brighter and stronger the longer I ran. Of course, I could see Keiko's sword glowing the same color as we made our approach. Completely assured now, I shouted "Uwwoo!" and let the skill rip.

My arms shot out, as if to stab and I felt the system assist pull me far faster than my usual speed. Without stopping, they flicked upward, bringing my blade above my head as I reached my target. Now knowing where the skill was going, I threw my effort behind it, releasing another loud shout as I unleashed a this new skill. My blade shot out, leaving a green line behind as my blade tore through the monster's neck. At that moment, I passed Keiko coming from the other way. Our eyes met and my lips twitched into a smile for a moment. Then we passed and landed on the ground in a crouch.

This skill had a much longer delay than any of my others. Though it was still extremely short under normal circumstances, it felt like a long time before I was able to spin back around. Just as my body unlocked and I turned back, Klein passed by me with a grin and charged past the boss, cutting a horizontal slash through its back and leaving a long red trail of light behind. Diabel was slower than everyone else because of his iron armor, so he hadn't made it as far as the members of Klein's group. However, this made him the next one to meet the boss. I could hear the crowd converging around us, finally here to watch the tail end of the fight.

However, just during the tail end of Klein's attack, the boss had quickly recovered. It raised its sword to bring down on the knight, but it was just a moment too slow. While the blade arced downward, Diabel slipped underneath and jumped, bringing an «Uppercut» into the stomach of the beast. It shattered instantly, allowing the man to continue his charge as he flew through the massive explosion of tiny triangular shards of light. He landed in a crouch, as I had, and silence fell.

The knight stood again, somehow signaling the beginning of the cheers. The crowd erupted and everyone crushed inward, pushing and shoving forward. My eyes went wide in the face of the ecstatic crowd. If they ran me over, who knows what would happen? "This way!" Came a shout from next to me." I looked over to see someone standing on the roofs. Without another thought, I jumped as high as I could, throwing myself against the side of the building and grabbing onto a windowsill. I looked down, my feet nearly brushing the heads of the players below.

Then, a small hand extended down from the roof. The hand belonged to a girl in a dark cloak. But most of my attention was drawn to the strange lines on her face. They looked like black make-up that had been drawn onto her face, three on each side, like whiskers. I took the hand of this strange player and she helped haul me onto the roof beside her.

"Uwaa, thanks for that. I didn't know you could get onto the rooftops here." I sighed, looking down below. "I owe you one for that, you really saved me there." I looked back at her near the end of that, in time to see her eyebrow twitch upward and a small grin touch her lips. Uh oh, did I saw something? I gulped.

"Well, if that's the case..." she let her grin widen and grabbed my arm and started pulling me.

"W,what? Where are we going?" I asked as she pulled me along. I could probably shake her off, but I was starting to feel weak as she continued dragging me along the roofs, slipping from one to another.

"You said you owe me one. I'm calling in that favor right now." She responded after a minute of running.

"F,favor? W,what kind of favor?" My head started swimming. I needed to get back to Keiko. I wasn't feeling very well now. "W,wait... wait," I said my voice coming out weak. She finally stopped and I fell over, panting. I dimly realized that something was wrong with me. I felt kind of numb, but with chills running over my skin. "I need my sister." The words came out of my mouth as little more than a mumble. I hadn't even meant to say them. Then, I finally said what I was trying to say.

"Who are you?"

She cocked a crooked grin. "I'm Argo, the «Rat»."

Author's note: Sorry it took me so long to write this one. It took forever because I had to beat my keyboard into the wall every other sentence to make it start working again. It really added to the time taken. -_-;


	25. Chapter 25

**Argo**** Chapter 25  
**

Author's note: Keyboard's still broken, so this is going to take quite some time to write... -_-;

And writer's block now. *dies* This is going to take a while...

Argo leaned down to look at me. I fought to meet her eyes, panting heavily and using every bit of my strength to stay upright. "Oi, you don't look so good." She said with an curious expression. She had a pen and pad, which she scribbled in without looking.

"I... have to... get back to... my sister..." I panted out. She thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded.

"Actually, that'll probably be better. To get both of you together." Then, she grabbed my arm and threw it around her shoulders, then started half-carrying me back the way we came. Back toward Keiko. Within moments, I started feeling better. That's when it hit me. I couldn't move too far away from Keiko, or this would happen.

And that's when the other half hit me. Keiko would be feeling the same way. I planted my foot against the rooftop and kicked off with the little bit of strength I had. I clenched my teeth as it felt like I would collapse again. I forced my feet to run forward. With every step, I could feel it get easier to keep going. I judged the distance roughly. I'd been a little farther than two-hundred meters from the place we fought the boss. So, that was the largest distance I could put between us before I wouldn't even be able to stand anymore.

It was astounding how quickly I regained my strength as I rushed back toward my little sister. In moments, I'd started to leave Argo behind. I reached the edge of the roof and threw myself over without a second thought. I looked down into the swarm below, but couldn't see Keiko. That didn't matter. I could feel exactly where she was, and as I landed, knocking people down with me, I barreled through the crowd without a thought.

In a moment, I reached my sister and grabbed her, picking her up and saying how sorry I was. It took a moment to process how she looked when I first saw her. Confused, maybe slightly afraid. Argo was right behind me, speaking loudly over the commotion. "Come on, this way. I'm not one for crowds." She pulled at my elbow and I had to set Keiko down before we set off through the crowd again.

As soon as she found a good spot, Argo scaled the side of a building and we followed her up. Now with the commotion below us, it was much more quiet and Keiko asked, "Onii-chan, who is this?" I saw Argo make a strange look for a moment, but it quickly disappeared.

It took a few seconds to bring her name to my lips. "This is, uhh, Argo."

"Argo, the «Rat». Information broker. You must be the little sister then?" She put her hand out and Keiko shook it halfheartedly.

"Well, it seems that she wants a favor..." I said hesitantly.

"I'm owed a favor," she wagged her finger at me. Keiko looked back and forth between us.

"Ahh, that is... she helped me out of the way before that huge crowd ran me over back there. And without thinking, I kind of said 'I owe you one'..."

Keiko sighed dramatically. "Onii-chan, don't go promising random strangers favors!" She puffed out her cheeks and glared at me for a moment, then started giggling. "Well, a promise is a promise, what's this favor you need from us?"

Argo smiled. "I want you to tell me about the 'Blessed Twins' thing that monster talked about."

"O,oh? That?" I blinked. I'm not so sure, but I think it has to do with this skill we got..." I pulled my menu open and switched to the skills section. I tapped the button to show her and she looked closely at my skill window. Her eyes went wide as soon as she saw it. "Why are your skill levels so high already?" she muttered. I noticed that my One-handed sword skill was level 21 and my Sprint skill was level 20. That was high? Didn't Klein say they leveled up 1000 times though? I only had twenty points in each.

Then her eyes slid down to the third skill on my list. «Blessed Twins». This was still level 1. I tapped the skill and the information came up in the other window. Argo's eyes scanned the sparse information, then she asked, "Can I see your skills menu?" It took me a moment to remember there were two menus labeled «Skills». I tapped the icon with the little rectangles(1) to open my status menu and switched to the skills section. I'd never actually looked at it before, now that I thought about it.

I tapped the icon and my right-hand window changed again. It went back to a plain white, the same way as the other skill menu. The drop-down in the middle displayed a few things. The first was «Sprint». I tapped it, bells jingling as always. The skill information came up in the right window and I read,

『Type: Active』

『Run forward, in a straight line to activate. Increases maximum movement speed by 77% while active.』

The 77% was written in green, so I tapped it to see if it would do anything. The tiny window that appeared simply said, 『75+2』.

Focus returning to the drop-down, I scanned the rest of the list. The other items were «Stat Boost», «Proximity Link», and «Exp Share» I could see Argo staring at them intently, her face twitching slightly as she waited for me to pull up the info on each one. It almost made me grin at how excited she looked, but I dropped the thought because I was really curious as well.

So, I started going down the list, opening each and reading their descriptions carefully. First was «Stat Boost». It read:

『Type: Passive』

『Increases Strength and Agility by 2% of Twin's Strength and Agility』

『(Bonus is doubled if equipment is identical)』

Again, the number was green, so I tapped it and the little box had 『(1+0)x2』. We were dressed identically right now, so the 'x2' had to be the 'double' part. I watched Argo nod emphatically at the description.

"Next." She said. While she didn't say it in a very nice tone, I had finished anyway, so I obliged. I touched «Proximity Link» This one read.

『Type: Passive』

『Increases Strength and Agility by a maximum of 1% of base Strength and Agility. Bonus decreases by 1% per 25 meters of distance to Twin.』

『Caution: When bonus drops below 0% Each 25 meters further decreases Strength and Agility by 1.』

"Ah, so that's why I started getting so weak earlier. Basically, we can't go very far apart, or we'll keep getting weaker until we can't move anymore," I explained to Keiko, who was reading over my shoulder.

"Hehehe, ahh... Sorry about that earlier..." Argo laughed awkwardly. The last one was «Exp Share». It was more simple, but probably the most helpful skill of the bunch.

『Type: Passive』

『Grants Experience equal to all Experience gained by Twin.』

"Wow, doesn't that basically mean we gain double exp?" Keiko asked.

Argo nodded quickly. "That's incredible," she commented. Then, "Well, not quite." She put a finger up to her whiskered cheek. "If you were to fight together to kill a monster, you would each get about half of the exp because of how the system splits exp in parties. However, each of you, assuming you have the skill as well?" she pointed at Keiko, who quickly nodded.

"Then, each of you would also gain the other half of the exp from killing the mob. In effect, you would be gaining the same amount of exp as if you were soloing. From the sound of it, the skill would be most useful if each of you were to fight separate monsters. Then you would both gain the exp for killing two mobs while you would only need to fight one."

"Oh, that's why I gained seventy-two thousand exp from those wolves back there-"

"What?! How much exp did you get?" I saw her hand stop for a moment, before scribbling with doubly renewed effort.

"I got seventy-two thousand for killing two of those wolves. However, that means I also got some for the two Keiko killed. That means my two were only worth thirty-six thousand. That makes each wolf worth eighteen thousand." I spoke slowly as I did the math in my head.

"Eighteen thousand..." Argo spoke in a low voice. "How much Col?"

"That would be..." I thought back, then divided the number by four. "Five thousand Col." Her hand twitched through a few more lines, probably noting all the number I gave. What did she say she did again? Something about information? I'd been kind of messed up and my memory was a bit fuzzy from the weakness, so it was hard to recall.

"What about items?"

"Well..." my mouth twisted into a bit of a grimace. "I... don't think that's really... applicable..." I spoke hesitantly.

"Hehehehe..." Keiko chuckled awkwardly behind me, scratching her head. Argo's eyebrow went up. The motion made it look like her whiskers twitched as well.

"And..." she spoke slowly, eyes focused intently on our faces, "why would that be?"

"Well... How to explain..." I mumbled, thinking.

"I'm lucky." Keiko said simply. Argo's eyebrow twitched up a bit further, her whiskers following again.

"Lucky?"

"Yes, lucky."

"Ok..." She looked down at her little pad for the first time. "Lucky..." She said as she wrote it down. She then underlined it a few times and added a '?' after.

All this talk of skills and experience made me wonder about something. How much exp had we actually gotten from the boss? My menu was still open, so I switched to the status section and checked my info.

"Woah! What the hell?" The words suddenly came from Argo.

"What?" I asked immediately, eyes moving away from my menu.

"Y,y,h,w..." she kept choking off her words, so I didn't know what she was trying to say. I made a rolling sort of motion with my hands to tell her 'go on...' but her mouth just kind of flapped open and closed for a while. Finally, she shook her head and cleared her throat. "You're level 12 already?" We've only been here for three days."

"Well, yeah... I guess?" I didn't know how to answer, but when I thought about it, I went on, "actually, we've only really been playing for two days. The first day we were figuring out what this whole game," mentally including that it couldn't really be called a game anymore, "was about."

Her face went blank. "Are you telling me you think its perfectly normal, in two days," pointing at my menu, "to gain _two-hundred forty-six thousand_ exp?!"

"Actually, I have no idea. This is the first video game we ever really played," I responded honestly, scratching my head in unison with Keiko.

"Then tell me this, about how many mobs have you killed?" I looked up, counting on my fingers as I thought back. Those wolves, that boar, the boss wolf... that was... "Seven. Err, seven between the two of us anyway."

Argo's eye twitched. "Do you know how many mobs I've killed?" Obviously I didn't so I shook my head. "Well over seven-hundred! I spent all yesterday farming! And you know what level I am? _Four!_ Now even if you've never played a game in your life, how can you possibly tell me that that makes sense?"

I blinked a few times. "Four?" I glanced at my stats. I was level eleven right now. I couldn't quite remember what level I was the last time I distributed my stat points, but I had leveled up again since then. I had another six points now, according the the center window with my two attributes in it.

"Ah! We have to go or we'll be late!" Keiko exclaimed.

"Late? To what?" Argo asked.

"The party. When everyone rushed in to congratulate us, Diabel-san shouted that we would all meet up again at the inn at the south edge of town at 2:00. It's almost time, and we're still all the way in the northwest section of town." Keiko spoke hurriedly, already starting to pull me that way.

"W,well, we have to go now. Bye Argo!" I said as Keiko started pulling with more force. Suddenly, Argo grabbed my arm.

"Wait, one more thing. What are your names?"

"Rei."

"Rai." We answered one after the other. Argo nodded and we left, running across the roofs toward the inn where the party would be held. "What was with those whiskers?" Keiko asked as we ran.

"I wonder. If we see her again, let's ask." In a few moments, a small window popped up before each of us.

『Friend Request

『Argo wants to add you as a friend』

After a short look at each other, we hit the green button underneath.

Author's note: Finally finished. -_-; I'm really hating my keyboard now. It's making this strange sound every time I hit a key on the right side of the keyboard now...

Oh, and I decided how to do skill proficiencies. Thanks Ningyo0, I used your formula on the Aincrad Worldbuilding forum. (That is, 20 points x level to level up. 1-3 points per attack x mob level for one-handed sword.) Also, I figured 1 Point per meter sprinted.

(1)Since I found out I had the menu wrong, I changed the status menu to the icon with the rectangles. I'll have trades and duels work in some other way.


	26. Chapter 26

**A New Job ****Chapter 26**

Author's note: I got my new keyboard! I can actually write a complete sentence now! Muahahahahahahahahahahahahah !

After we made it to the inn, we met everyone and had a huge party with the ridiculous amounts of money we made from killing all those wolves. Apparently, when the Boss died, the rest fled. The city had become a safe «Inner Area» soon after. When the party ended, we made our way out to the field. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon. The attack had come so early in the morning it felt weird that it was still the same day.

On our way, we passed three of the people who had been at the meeting in the field. I looked closer so their cursors came up and gave me their names. PoH, Johnny Black, and Red-Eyed Xaxa. Unlike the happy, energetic clamor all around at our success in fending off the wolves, they looked... hollow? They clumped together with that strange spooked look, as if they had seen a ghost or something. I watched them pass a short distance away in the still-crowded streets, but didn't approach them.

Out in the field, Keiko and I immediately agreed that we wouldn't be able to hunt around here. The woods were nearly as crowded as the city streets. There were so many people, it was actually surprising that the monsters had anywhere to spawn! So, we headed back. Luckily, the field was really close to the town, so it didn't take long.

"What do we do now Onii-chan?" Keiko asked. We had killed the giant monster wolf and saved the town, but that wasn't really the point. Our real objective was getting out. Escaping this «Death Game». Until we met the «Floor Boss», we had to keep getting stronger. How would we do that without farming monsters? There were so many people here, we wouldn't be able to get any ourselves...

"That's it!" I exclaimed, dropping my right fist into my left palm. "There are so many people here, we can't kill monsters. So, let's go somewhere else!" With all these people here, everywhere else will be almost empty!" I showed a glorious smile.

But then Keiko asked, "And how do we know where to go? The surface area of just this floor is about eighty square kilometers."

"..." We kept walking.

_PING_ We both recoiled as a high pitched dinging sound seemed to ring around us out of nowhere. A little yellow icon appeared in my vision as well, a small circle with a white envelope in it. "Mail?"

We both tapped it and a little message box appeared in front of us. At the top, it said the message was from Argo. 『Hey, I have a proposition for you guys. If you send me information on stuff, I'll pay you for it. It can be any kind of info. Information about players, monsters, quests, farming spots, anything really. Anything that you think other people would want to know. How about it? I pay well— I might even repay you with other information.』

Keiko and I looked at each other. "Sounds like a good deal to me. If we find anything out, we can make extra money just by telling her." We nodded together, and I started writing a reply, but stopped. "Hey, if she knows so much, you think she could tell us how to get to the next town?"

"Oh yeah, that's a good idea."

"Ok. Then... 'Ok... we'll do that... but could you tell us, how do we get to the next town?'" I dictated as I typed out the reply. I hit send and the window disappeared.

A moment later, another pinging sound indicated another message. I tapped the icon and saw it was a reply from Argo. _Fast._ "Just use the «Field Map»." I furrowed my eyebrows for a moment. "What's a «Field Map»?"

"It sounds like a map that shows the field, so... that would mean it shows this floor? With that, we would be able to find the next town over," Keiko reasoned.

"Huh... So how do we get it? Is it an item, like the map that guy had?" I was talking about the second guy we saw our first day here, who had ignored our request for help because he was busy going somewhere. He had brought a big map out before he ran off.

"Hehe, just ask Argo," Keiko giggled.

"True enough." I sent a message asking, but within the span of time it took me to draw my hand back, another message came in. "Seriously, how does she do that?" Her next message explained that the field map was in the last menu. The one I just now realized I'd never actually opened.

Keiko pulled up the main menu for us, since I still had Argo's message open. She tapped the last icon on the list, the little rectangle with a pointer over it. The following menu contained three items, just like all the rest. «Dungeon Map», «Quest», and «Field Map».

She tapped the last button and a new window opened. It had a small area colored in, with little blue dots. I figured they were us, but everything outside the little area around us was empty. The window actually didn't display anything and was entirely transparent in those areas. I typed out that the map was mostly incomplete and sent my message to Argo.

However, I didn't receive an instantaneous reply this time. After a few seconds, a voice called out and I heard the clap of feet landing heavily behind me. "Then I'll sell you the map. A thousand Col. A window appeared in front of me. 『Trade』 My name was listed on one side, Argo on the other. Underneath Argo, the only thing on the list: «Field Map». My half was empty.

Although I wasn't sure how to put anything in to trade, it seemed like everything here was used with dragging. So, I tapped Keiko's menu twice to bring up her item menu and pressed my finger to the separate section at the bottom where it said we had 54033 Col and swiped my finger over into the 『Trade』 window. A small pop-up appeared and I entered the number 1000. 『1000 Col』 appeared in the trade window on my list.

I saw Argo's eyebrow rise dramatically and asked what it was. She responded that it should be impossible to be able to operate another player's menu. "Ahh..." I wasn't sure what to say to that.

"Well, it's not really surprising, since we share an inventory," Keiko added on. Argo's other eyebrow went up too.

"You two are just full of information," she smiled and tapped her window. I couldn't see anything there, but the message 『Argo has accepted the trade』 appeared atop my trade window. So, I hit the green accept button and the window closed. Keiko switched back to the map and it now showed the entire floor. There were markers here and there to show various towns, with their names. This was the first time that I noticed the name of the town we were currently in. «Horunka».

"Thank you." I bowed.

A smirk crossed Argo's face. "No, thank you. A number of the shops in «Starting City» sold the map for 50 Col. Keep that in mind on the floors above this." Despite being tricked, I had to chuckle. Even in tricking us to pay way more than we needed to, she'd still thrown us a bone, letting us know that we could buy the maps for the higher floors for much cheaper later on.

"I'm an information dealer," she went on, "I'll sell information on anything," she exclaimed proudly.

"Then, what about your whiskers?" Keiko asked immediately.

"Hehe," Argo let out a small chuckle. "One-hundred thousand Col for that."

"Eh? Even we don't have that much yet..." I sighed.

"Then ask again when you do. Remember what I said, I _will_ pay you for any good information you find." With a wink, she vaulted back up onto the low roof of a nearby building and was gone.

"Huh, she's an interesting one." We grinned at each other. After checking the map and determining the next village we would head to, we set off. We hit a shop on our way out to sell off our trash mats from the Boss Wolf fight. While selling, I eyed the strange item we had picked up along the way, the «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I». Apparently, the NPC shopkeeper wouldn't even buy it. As soon as we finished, we set off.

It was a little further from the «Starting City» than «Horunka» was, through the forest going North and around the edge of the desert, in a lightly forested plains area. The town was named «Agriin». It seemed to be a medium sized city from what I could tell on the map.

As we passed the last house leading out of town, a scream erupted from inside. We didn't even need to exchange glances anymore. Both Keiko and I shot into motion at the same time, dashing into the small house.

Author's note: Aaaahhh! I changed my mind about how I wanted to end that! XD This should go in a much more interesting way now! Anyway, Cliff Hanger!

Hmmm, there was something else I wanted to say... but I can't remember what it was now. Oh yeah, that was it. I went back and fixed all my screw-ups with the menu in chapters 6 and 17. They were bare minimum changes, so nothing really changed except for the descriptions. That and the one line in this chapter; they _still_ hadn't looked at the map section until now because of it.


	27. Chapter 27

**Agatha**** Chapter 27**

I burst into the small house first, to discover a two players in a precarious position among the strangely large crowd inside. While the house was small, there were at least ten people inside, all with a look of impatience, though it was turning to shock on most of their faces. The reason was obvious. A male player seemed had grabbed the wrist of the girl, strangely older among all these teenage players, and knocked a wooden bowl from her hands. The girl had a shocked expression as the wooden bowl's contents spilled on the floor underfoot. It must have been her who screamed.

On the other hand, the young man, appearing about sixteen himself, was fuming. I didn't consider why none of these guys inside weren't helping the berated woman. I jumped forward and grabbed the offending young man by his collar, yanking him away roughly. His furious glare switched to me a moment later as I shouted, "What are you doing?"

His the answer that came out of his mouth wasn't what I'd been expecting. "The damn NPC won't give me the «Secret Medicine of the Forest» Quest!" He shouted back.

"Huh?" Quest? NPC? I looked over at the woman, who now had tears rolling down her face. The cursor appeared above her head and her hp bar appeared to the right. I immediately noticed the text 『NPC』under her hp bar.

Before I could respond, a loud fit of dry coughing rang through the confined space. I looked to see a closed wooden door. The sound was coming from behind it. "The sick kid's you have to collect the medicine for is supposed to be in there, but the door doesn't open." This explanation came from one of the bystanders in the little kitchen.

"Agatha!" The NPC shouted and ran to the door that shouldn't have been able to open, and threw it wide. A small gasp escaped from everyone, but Keiko was the first to rush forward through the open doorway, I followed right on her heels. There was only enough room for us to fit in front of the bed in the tiny room, so everyone else had to squeeze into the doorway and crane their heads inside to see.

On the bed lie a tiny little girl with braided brown hair. Unlike the NPC woman, who only had 『NPC』 written under her name, the little girl had 『Agatha』 written. A named NPC? Agatha was as white as the sheet covering her, with bony shoulders that poked from under the sheets. As I watched, she launched into another fit of hacking coughs. Maybe it was just me, but it sounded like each one was weaker than the last.

Keiko opened her mouth, and just before her words came out, big golden question marks appeared over the heads of the two NPCs. "What's wrong?" It occurred to me that those marks indicated the beginning of a quest. Unlike the quest given by the wolf demon, this was actually a system recognized quest. However, the woman began to speak and I threw my full attention back to her.

"Agatha was struck with a grave illness a few days ago. None of the town's medicine would work. She continued growing weaker. The only thing that could cure her was the ovule of the monsters in the forest. A wandering swordsmen helped me get one for her, and it helped bring her fever down, but it wasn't enough. I've been having more adventurers help since yesterday, and I made a potent soup using the ovules they brought, but I just dropped it all in the kitchen. If I can't get more soon, her condition will quickly grow worse. She will die soon at this rate." Her mouth closed briefly.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Keiko asked immediately.

Tears now streamed down the NPC's face as she spoke. I couldn't help but notice that this one was surprisingly realistic, despite just being a computer program. "I need to get more of the ovules quickly, many more..." she was quiet for a minute. "It would be too many for you to collect by yourselves, I've been collecting everything the adventurers have brought since yesterday. If it were to take so long again, it would be too late."

"No way we can do that, not with all those guys killing them all," I spoke to Keiko. Then, "What else can we do then?" I asked. In response, the woman tilted her head and made a kind of 'huh' sound. My question was clear enough, but apparently not the phrase the NPC was looking for. Someone at the party had explained how quest acquisition works, probably just for a chance to talk to me, but I had picked up some of the important information about it. Apparently, you had to say the right phrases, or the NPC would act like they didn't understand what you were saying.

"Is there another way?" Keiko followed up. This time, the NPC went on.

"Well, the only other method would be to take her to a sacred spring deep in the forest. It's near the base of the Western Mountains, and guarded by a pack of ferocious wolves. It's said that the spring was blessed by a pair of powerful warriors in the long-distant past. Supposedly, water has healing properties, and is able to cure any illness.

"She can't mean..."

"No way..." We looked at each other for a moment, then—

"We know the place!" We shouted together. The NPC jerked back slightly, about to make the motion indicating she didn't understand, when we followed with "We'll take her there!" She fixed us with her gaze for a minute, then nodded.

"Ok, I'll trust you. Out in the forest, Agatha's health will decline much faster than here, so you will only have a short time to get there, before it is too late. The maximum is about one hour." In the left side of my vision, a window suddenly appeared, my eyes quickly ran over the content.

『Quest』

『Agatha and the Magic Spring』

『Bring Agatha to the Magic』

『Spring before time expires』

『Time: 00:59:58』

『Reward:Unknown』

The line labeled time counted down before my eyes. After a moment, the semi-transparent window faded away. I briefly locked eyes with Keiko, then Agatha. I gulped and turned back to the young housewife.

"Please, save my daughter."


	28. Chapter 28

**The Magic Spring, and then...?**** Chapter 28**

Author's Note: Uuuu, so busy lately. T-T

With the request 'save my daughter' from the NPC woman, I hefted Agatha onto my back and we got going. Of course, a pair of beautiful twin girls carrying an NPC somehow managed to draw even more attention to us than we usually received, but it didn't last very long. We were already near the edge of the town, so we headed right out before swinging around and moving toward the mountains.

While we had said we knew the spring, in fact neither of us knew _where_ it was exactly. We just knew the general direction was toward the mountains, somewhere in these many square kilometers of forest. Of course, we had our secret weapon, my sister, so it wasn't nearly as much of a worry as it would be for anyone else. While walking, I thought, if this was anyone else, they would need to know exactly where the spring was beforehand to make it there in the strict one hour time limit.

That brought one more thing to mind. If a bunch of people had been doing the quest to get medicine for this sick little girl, what about now? The little girl wasn't there anymore, so would her mother continue asking players to go get medicine? Had this disruption stopped the chance for others to begin the quest? For that matter, this quest now had them taking Agatha to a spring to recover. That was definitely a one-time thing. It's not like they would bring her back and she would immediately fall ill again and it would all start over again, right? If that was the case, no one would be able to do the quest to get the medicine ever again. Wasn't that bad? I didn't know what kind of reward the quest gave, but hoped it wouldn't be missed by all the players that could no longer complete it.

It had taken us close to ten minutes to go from the demon's house to the village, but that was at a breakneck sprinting pace. I didn't want to even come close to the time limit on this quest, so I got Keiko to pick up the pace a little more. All around, I saw nothing but trees going off into the distance. In every direction, the forest appeared unchanging. It really was a miracle that Keiko was leading, or we really wouldn't get to the spring, not just within an hour, but at all.

It had been nearly forty minutes when we suddenly broke out of the forest and were standing immediately before our destination, the spring.

Standing even closer than the spring was a pack of wolves. The stared at us, as if they were surprised, before baring their teeth with wicked sounding snarls. My eyes ran over the group quickly and I counted ten. The odds were pretty bad, but somehow, the wolves didn't give off the same feeling as before. They didn't feel like powerful, giant monsters. They seemed more like, well, wolves. I looked them over and my suspicions were confirmed. While their name hadn't changed, these 『Deep Forest Wolves』only had one health bar, instead of three.

As such, they probably wouldn't give the same crazy amounts of exp as before. The thought almost made me frown, except that even we wouldn't have stood much of a chance against ten of those wolves from before. These weak looking ones? Probably not too bad. As I moved to draw my sword, small arms tightened around my throat. "No, I'm scared," Agatha's weak words were mumbled into my right ear.

"I can put you down then," I suggested, but felt her head swinging back and forth quickly as her arms tightened again. I sighed. "Looks like I have to sit this one out, Keiko. Be careful."

My sister had a wry grin for a moment, watching the little girl clinging to me. Then, she turned to face the wolves and drew her sword. They seemed unable to decide whether to attack, though I'm not really sure why. Maybe our levels were so high that these new, weaker wolves didn't attack on sight? No, from what I'd heard, all the monsters in this game would attack, no matter what.

Taking the initiative, Keiko brought her glowing sword up and launched straight into the group most dispersed around her, but the one she aimed for jumped forward, jaws opening for a bite. With a flash, she brought her blade down, straight through the monster's head and it shattered into oblivion instantly. Landing a moment later, Keiko was surrounded. As the wolves darted in to attack one after another, she stood her ground, her blade darting this way and that, parrying and striking back at her attackers without pause.

While watching from the side, I realized this was my first time actually watching Keiko fight. Before now, I'd always been focused on my own actions, or we would be fighting in unison. Only now could I see how she normally fought in this world.

It didn't take long, only a minute or two before she dispatched the last wolf. While she had fought them off easily enough, she had taken a few glancing blows herself, indicated by the bit of her hp bar that was now missing. It was only about 10% but she took out a small potion and drank it anyway.

We had a spare fifteen minutes still. I knelt down and Agatha climbed off of my back just a few steps from the spring. I took a step back to stand next to Keiko while the little girl smiled at us. I nodded, indicating that she should go ahead. Agatha knelt down and began taking off her little white pajama gown— I spun around when I realized this and stood facing the other way while Keiko put a hand to her lips and let out a small giggle. After a few tens of seconds, I heard a small splash.

"IIYYEEII" a screech and the sound of splashing water. I spun around to see what was wrong, to find Agatha huddled down, shivering uncontrollably at the side of the little pool.

"I,i,i,it's,s,s,s s,s,s,s,s,sooooo c,c,c,c,c,cooolllld,d,d,d,d,d," I could hardly even understand what she said through the chattering of her teeth and the uncontrolled, stuttered words.

Keiko quickly moved to the little girl and wrapped her arms around, saying, "Onii-chan, come here! She's like ice." Agatha clung to my sister, holding herself close as I moved in as well. I touched the small girl's bare shoulder and a shiver went up my back. Her skin really felt like ice.

It must have been exaggerated by the system, there's no way a human's skin could really get this cold—

While that thought went through my mind, I quickly hugged my arms around her, pressing myself against her back to share my own body heat and try to warm her up again.

"What do we do? She needs to bathe in the spring to get better, but if it's that cold..." I thought for a minute. Bringing up the quest screen again, I checked our remaining time. Just twelve minutes.

I sighed deeply. "Self-sacrifice time." I switched back to the character menu and held my hand out, pausing with my finger over the button. I gulped, this was not going to be pleasant.

I hit the 『Remove all Equipment』 button, then again when it changed to 『Remove Underwear』. I gasped when the the cool feeling coming through my clothes changed to ice, pressed against the bare skin of the whole front of my body. I grit my teeth after a moment.

"The plan is this: we keep her warm until she's cured." Keiko hesitated for only a moment. She knew that meant we had to go back into that terrifyingly cold water. The last time, it had felt like forever, but was only a couple minutes of time. Who knew how long it would take this time? Keiko nodded and repeated my action of removed in all her clothes.

"Ok Agatha, we're going to keep you warm while you go in, so you don't have to worry." Together, we held the little girl while we shuffled sideways a step into the water.

My foot froze, as did my little sister's. It was on a whole different level than when we bathed in it before. The water was clearly far below zero degrees. If this was the real world, not only the top, but the whole spring would be frozen solid. There was no way we could slide into this water. There was no easing into something like this. "All at once," we said together. After a moment, we jumped, up into the air for a moment, then down into the water.

I don't actually remember landing in the water, probably because I blacked out. Though it shouldn't exactly be possible, I definitely lost consciousness for a moment. From the shock of the water.

The next thing I knew, I was standing (my feet could just touch the bottom) neck deep with Agatha clutched between my sister and my arms. It didn't even feel like my skin was cold anymore, it actually seemed like it was burning. And it was painful. Actually painful, in this world where there shouldn't have been pain. I saw a small message that seemed as if it mirrored my thoughts.

『ERROR』

『Pain Dampener error』

『resetting...』

『ERROR』

『Pain Dampener Reset error』

『Recalibrating...』

I don't know how to describe what happened next. It was like my body suddenly became numb. Then, I was washed over with heat, then cold. An uncomfortable feeling followed, then my vision went white with pain. In a moment it was gone, followed by a strange sensation I could only describe as some sort of humming, then an itching for an instant, and bliss, back to nothing, and more pain. This went on for only few moments before a new message appeared.

『ERROR』

『Abnormal Status found』

『Reverting to default set』

In a moment, the burning cold of the spring attacked me again. But, it was worse, so much worse. The defaults of the pain dampening were probably a lot less lenient than the regular ones designed for the players of the game. As the cold and pain washed over me, a small, calm part of my mind realized it was a good thing I didn't have to breath in this world, because I couldn't do it if I tried.

As my glazed eyes wandered around, I finally managed to focus on Keiko's face across from me. When our eyes met, I finally felt what I'd missed up to now. Of course, the same thing had happened to her.

Meanwhile, Agatha was staying unmoving between us. I just let my mind blank out for the rest of the time until she finally raised her head and said that she felt better. I managed to move my feet, agonizing with every step, toward the bank. We finally reached the grass and collapsed, side-by-side. I stared up at the sky, or rather, the floor above. The sun was just peeking into the gap between this floor and the next.

For some time, I couldn't manage to move. Agatha redressed herself and sat down near us. I was reminded that she was an NPC when she just sat there idly, waiting for us to make the next move. I finally rolled back up into a sitting position. I looked at Agatha, who was still pretty scrawny, but definitely with more life in her. She certainly had recovered. The next words out of her mouth were both surprising and confusing.

"Now that I'm better, I want to go see Onii-chan!"


	29. Chapter 29

**Are We There Yet?**** Chapter 29**

Author's Note: OK! I just slept for thirteen hours and now I'm ready to go!

"Who?" I stared at Agatha while that word passed my trembling lips. Now that the paralyzed numbness had passed, I had started shivering intensely. I quickly opened my menu and put all my clothes back on, hoping to hold in some of my body heat and warm myself up again. Keiko soon did the same.

Now dressed, but still shivering, we listened to Agatha's response. "Onii-chan is the first person who brought me medicine," she said while crossing her arms behind her back. "He was also the only one who came to sit by my bed while I drank the medicine." Her smile wavered for a moment as she said, "Although, at that time, that person started to cry. He never told me what was wrong." Then returning to her happy tone, "I thought, now that I'm not sick anymore, I wanted to go see that person again."

I pondered her words for a minute. "But, shouldn't you get back home to your mother? I'm sure she's worried about you right now," Keiko said from next to me.

Agatha slowly shook her head. "I already told Momma, that the first thing I want to do when I get better is to go see that person again." This was a surprisingly well scripted conversation, I realized. Whoever wrote it had even figured that the people doing it would want to return the little girl home first thing.

The big question mark appeared above Agatha's head, telling me that this was actually a real quest. If that's how it was, I figured it would be ok to accept, but looked at Keiko for confirmation. After a brief hesitation, she nodded.

"Yes, we'll bring you to see that person." My quest window updated immediately, even as Agatha squealed in delight and said many thank you's. I glanced over, seeing that the window indicated that we had to look for someone named 'Kirito'. Well, It should be ok; as long as we had Keiko, we would find him soon enough.

Although... "This Kirito, you think he's an NPC set up for this quest, or another player?" While it would immediately seem that it was another NPC, there was no reason why an NPC would bring her the medicine the quest had players bringing.

"Hmmm, when did he bring you the medicine?" Keiko asked.

"That was two days ago, it was pretty late at night though." Nighttime of the first day. That definitely sounded like a player.

"Well then, let's go find him," Keiko concluded. We wobbled back to our feet, and re-equipped our swords. Instead of sitting on my waist with reassuring feeling, my blade now felt like dead-weight. It was definitely not a good feeling. No longer sick, Agatha walked beside me, holding my left hand while Keiko led the way.

It really was strange how she decided to find someone(I say find, because she didn't actually look for them, she just found them). She closed her eyes spun in a circle, and wherever she stopped, that was the way she went. She would repeat the process every once in a while, and we kept walking, even as the sun dropped lower in the sky.

It wasn't like before. I didn't feel light like a feather anymore. It was like all my strength had left me, my legs were heavy, but I kept walking. Keiko wasn't any better, but led the way without pause, so we could find Agatha's special person.

The sun set behind the mountains at our backs, and we came out into a field soon after. We were just at the edge of a hilly area on the right, but after checking our direction, we headed away from that area. On our other side, a lake that ran far off into the distance. Across the lake, I could just make out the glint of sunlight off the buildings of the far-distant «Starting City». In only a few minutes more, the sun had dipped low enough that even the tall buildings no longer caught the light.

We headed up alongside the long lake. According to where the sun had gone down, we were moving North. That's if the sun set in the West in this world. But then again, what did it matter? I hadn't heard anyone give directions like that before, so the only one any cardinal directions would mean anything to, would only be myself. I shook my head clear of my rambling thoughts as we approached an area with monsters. There were numerous mobs here, some sort of foxes, but we skirted around them, not feeling up for fighting right now.

As we reached the end of the lake, hills stretched before us again and we changed direction to avoid them. Our new heading brought us around the far corner of the lake and toward the forest. How many hours had we been walking now? Despite this being a virtual world, I had already learned that it was possible to collapse from exhaustion. What if that happened now, while we weren't in a (relatively) safe town, but out in a dangerous field? With that in mind, I continued to put one foot in front of the other as I marched, half-asleep, forward.

It wasn't much longer before Agatha said she was sleepy, she climbed up onto my back and I staggered forward. Her tiny body seemed to weigh many times more than before, and I could hardly manage to hold onto her anymore. Despite all that, I kept going. My head spun, my vision grew cloudy, darkness stretched in every direction, and no matter how long we walked, the forest never seemed to draw any closer. At one point, Keiko dropped back from the lead position to walk beside me, both leaning against each other as we continued. Only the threat of death kept us from falling asleep.

Finally a strange sight caught my zombie-like attention. Big white spinning blades. Was I dreaming? What was that thing? I watched them spin, mesmerizingly spinning while we plodded one step closer after another. The shape grew taller and expanded larger in front of me. The spinning blades were attached to big, long towers. The towers disappeared behind a big rock. As we advanced, I realized that big rock wasn't actually a big rock. It was a whole lot of smaller rocks. They were all piled up on top of each other...

A wall. It took my sleep-deprived brain at least a half-hour to come to that conclusion. The big pile of rocks was a wall. Finally, I could tell that it was drawing closer. Surely, that was the town we were heading for.

Keiko, we're almost there. I tried to say that, but no words came out of my mouth. Despite that, she nodded once. I could see the sky growing lighter already. The moon was on the horizon, nearly dipping below the far mountains to the left of the city wall. As we approached, monsters began to stand between us and the town. Groups of bulls, as well as other four-legged monsters that didn't look like any animals I knew of. Again, we left a large gap between ourselves and their aggro area as we moved around them.

Once past the monsters, the sun's rays slanted past my eyes when we were nearly to the city. I saw a few people move out of the city. They were wearing light armor and had swords. Players. One of them could be Kirito.

Keiko, do you know which one is the man we're looking for? Again, my no words would pass my lips. I tried to swallow, but couldn't manage it. My mouth was too dry. Keiko shook her head. The other people passed us. They had strange looks on their faces. Despite wanting to ask them if they were this 'Kirito,' I couldn't say anything, and just kept walking. There was one more person ahead. A boy. Black hair. Leather coat. Sword on his back. I passed the threshold, over onto the brick road of the city and the words 『Inner Area』displayed in my vision.

Safe.

This person I wanted to ask, was a few steps further, but as soon as that word went through my mind, it was like my feeling returned. I felt my aching legs, the heat in my face, the cumbersome weight on my back. My burning stomach, eyes, skin, everything. Everything was spinning. I tried to put another foot forward. Even as my lips formed the words, Are you Kirito? everything swung upward.

I saw the brick ground coming toward my face, but never felt it hit.

Author's Note: Yay! They finally finished translating book 10! Time to read!


	30. Chapter 30

**Delirium**** Chapter 30**

Author's Note: Alicization Running was awesome! ^_^ I can't wait for the next book!

Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot.

That's all that registered. It was so hot. Why was it so hot? It was unbearable. I couldn't open my eyes, it was like they were sealed shut. I could open my mouth, but my burning throat wouldn't let any words out. Water. I need water. Still, no words. Was there anyone there? Where was Keiko? I could feel my arms, though they felt like deadweight at my sides. Even so, I forced them under myself to sit up.

"Woah! Don't move around!" The voice of a boy. I felt something cool land on my stomach, and immediately my forehead felt like it had caught fire. My mouth opened in wordless agony as I flopped back again, chest arching into the air until I felt something cool placed against my skin and the pain abated.

After a minute, "Are you still conscious?" came the voice from earlier. I nodded slightly, careful not to move too much. "Good. I found you two coming into town when you collapsed. You have high fevers, somehow induced by something you encountered. There aren't any healing crystals for a few more floors up, so you're going to have to wait out the effects." How is my sister? I wanted to ask. Before long, the cool feeling on my forehead dissipated and the pain was so intense I fainted.

Everything was still dark when I felt myself regain consciousness. I had no idea how much time had passed, but my condition felt exactly the same. Same burning heat coursing all through my body, same cool thing, probably a damp rag, resting on my forehead to barely drive off the searing sensation from before. My throat was so dry my mouth and tongue felt numb. While before, Aincrad had been a world without real pain, this was the worst I had ever felt, even more than in the real world.

"Well, you don't have to worry, your sister is here. She's been sleeping the whole time. Also, I met the NPC you had with you, Agatha— Oops, that reminds me. I'm Kirito. Well, I talked to Agatha, thanks for bringing her to find me. She went home after, but said she left a mark on your map of something secret. Probably your quest reward."

As my fevered brain worked through his speech, a few thoughts surfaced. We found Kirito! Was at the forefront of those thoughts. Also, Keiko was nearby. I reached through my agonizing pain into the place inside myself where I felt Keiko and searched for her. On my right. I slowly stretched out my right hand, groping out hesitantly. Suddenly, I felt fingers close on my wrist and guide my hand until my palm touched the soft skin that I instinctively knew to be Keiko's. Her hand turned over underneath mine and our fingers intertwined.

I heard a sigh, strange though, it sounded like a lamenting sigh. "I guess you're the older one? Protective?" His words were simple, but I could tell from his tone that he was sad about something, though he tried to hide it. He was right though, even if it was by four minutes, I was still the older sibling(not to mention a boy). So, it was my job to protect her. Even so, there wasn't anything I could do in a situation like this. My consciousness was fading again. I only heard one more thing before it pulled me under. The tone was strangely bitter.

"I wish I could hold my sister's hand like that again. But, that... that's too much to hope for... for someone like me..."

Author's Note: Wow, I totally couldn't think of more to write for that one. Sorry, but I didn't really know what I could do with it... Not much action, and not much to describe from the delirious with fever person who has their eyes closed the whole time... so yeah.


	31. Chapter 31

**What Happened?**** Chapter 31**

Author's Note: Because I really wasn't satisfied with that last chapter(it was necessary to the story), here's a new, better one!

My eyes drifted open slowly. "Uuummmmnnnnn" I groaned. I sat up and looked around. Where was I? Keiko was lying next to me on the bed, our hands entwined in a way that seemed to have become habit recently. I slowly pulled myself free and slid out from under the covers quietly. My bare feel landed on the wood floor with a small 'da' sound. Soon, the cool feeling of the boards sank into my feet. I stood and looked around.

I was in a rather large room. Everything was wooden, from the large bed-frame to the chairs and small table at the far end near the window. There were two doors, one close to me, and the other at the far end of the room. The L shape of the wall showed that there was definitely a room behind the far door, but the closer door's smooth wall gave no such indication. Keiko appeared to still be soundly asleep. Funny, even though we were twins, I always woke up before her. I was always the one who had to wake her up for school.

School...

How many days had it been? The last I could remember, we were tasked with bringing Agatha to the magic spring and we headed off into the woods to find it. That had been on the third day of this death game. That would be Tuesday in the real world. November 8. A Tuesday, halfway through the school week. I would be days behind on schoolwork. My thoughts froze there for a moment. I was thinking about this all wrong.

It had been at least two days. We hadn't cleared the first floor yet. I felt my knees go weak and sunk to the floor next to the bed. There were one-hundred floors. If it took us five days each, that was five hundred days. About a year and a half. If it took longer? Ten days? I stopped myself before I did the math on that one. This «Death Game» wasn't ending any time soon. This was still just the beginning. And already, I had met a slew of new people, learned the back-story of another world, saved a town, even formed new habits. I had definitely grown even closer to Keiko as well.

In three days.

At the rate I was going, by the time this was all over I would be a completely different person than the middle-school non-gamer who liked soccer and had a knack for fixing things who dove into this game. Who would I be? What kind of person would I become? I would lose years of my education, instead learning all about a bloodthirsty world of swords and death. There's no way that be a good thing back in the real world. Once we were free, it would be like releasing a plague on Japan. We would be like soldier, no. Not soldiers, more like savages. It wouldn't be easy to shake the 'kill or be killed' mentality that would no doubt saturate the survivors of this. It that was the case, then even me...

I shook my head. I didn't want to go down that path. No matter what happened, I couldn't lose myself here, because I had someone I definitely had to protect. I turned my head back and watched the sleeping face of my little sister.

Again, it was strange. The person I was looking at right now looked nothing like my sister. She had a round face with perfectly smooth cheeks, and round, rosy lips. Her eyes were large, with the outer edges tilted upward with a flare of long eyelashes all the way around, as if she had permanent eyeliner on. Her skin was flawless, like you always saw idols look on the covers of magazines. She had ridiculously long _blond_ hair as well. Though I had tried not to look, from the numerous occasions of our partial(or sometimes complete) nudity, I'd noticed that she had perfect skin without the slightest sign of freckles or birthmarks. She was curvy and had rather large breasts for a Japanese woman, let along a fourteen year old girl.

That's to say, she looked absolutely nothing like her real-life self. In real life, Keiko always kept her hair no longer than shoulder length. It was classic, straight black, but not overly smooth or shiny. She had slight freckling on her face. She was a tad bit stocky for being a girl, though that was surely because she'd always played basketball. Keiko(like me) was rather short, pretty much the only thing these avatars had in common with our real selves.

Basically, the Keiko I had known my whole life looked nothing like the beautiful girl sleeping soundly behind me had nothing at all in common. However, that was purely on a physical level. Despite how she looked, I knew 'Keiko' immediately upon looking at her face. If I were to meet someone in the real world who looked like this avatar, surely I would think 'Keiko' when I looked at her. It was actually kind of scary. In such a short time, I was able to look at a strange face and recognize it as the twin sister that I had known forever. I was so... accepting.

Even scarier still, was myself. How in the world was I so comfortable in this body already? If I payed attention to it, I could recognize how my entire center of balance was shifted far downward, near my hips instead of all the way up at my shoulders. I was falling over myself trying to walk the first day here because of it, but I could already fight against giant monsters without the slightest fear of losing my balance, in just a few days time. Before, it seemed like all my weight leaned forward because of the heavy breasts this body had, but somehow, my balance had shifted backward to compensate without me realizing it.

It had all happened so quickly, yet in such a natural way, it was as if I had already become this imaginary person, who existed only in this game. The real me was lying in a hospital(probably) right now, as if asleep. A perfectly regular fourteen year old boy. And yet here I was, the me now, who could look in a mirror, see a young girl's beautiful face and see 'myself'. What would I do when I returned to my real body, years down the line, finally male again?

Klein had said something about 'spending time in a body of the opposite gender not being good for the mind.' Or something like that. What about when the time spent wasn't in disjointed hours spent a little bit at a time each day, but for straight, consecutive years? Would I even recognize myself as 'male' anymore? Well, that didn't come until later. If I thought about it, if one day I thought of myself as 'female' because of this body, then surely I would eventually change my view back to 'male' in my true body again.

Right?

I shook my head again. This was getting me nowhere. I stood up, looking down at this body as my thoughts lingered for a moment. I was dressed in my usual off-white underwear, most of my skin revealed. I poked my stomach. It all sure felt real. Even more-so now than before, for some reason.

Another shake cleared the my last lingering thoughts and I approached the door a meter or so away. I turned the handle and saw that it opened into a small dead-end hallway. The door opened to the wall, the opening facing a set of stairs heading downward. An inn? No, that couldn't be right. Inns had multiple rooms on a floor, there was only one room here. So it was like Diabel's room, the rented out top floor of an NPC's house.

I turned back to look at the other door. Now that I was paying more attention, I noticed the small plate on the wall with English letters on it. "Hmm." I walked over and looked at the writing. "B...aaa...ttthhh...rroomm." I read out the letters slowly. "That's... umm... bathroom. Oh, ok." I realized it had no real significance to me, but I decided to look inside anyway.

I opened the door, which swung inward and looked inside. The room was split in two parts. To the left, a carpeted area with a small screen. For changing clothes, I figured. To the right, there was a giant standing bathtub, with rounded sides like a ship. Definitely western. It covered the whole floor from wall to wall, a good three meter distance, with a large faucet hanging over the edge from the wall alongside me.

Now that I thought of it, this room would be helpful afterall. I wanted to head downstairs and look around before Keiko woke up, but I was still in my underwear. I didn't want to get dressed downstairs, in case there were people there. And doing so here might wake her up due to the jingling sound every action on the menu made. However, Klein had mentioned how no sounds could travel through closed doors back on our first time out hunting. If that was the case...

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I swiped my menu open and put my clothes on, followed by my armor, and finally my sword. However, I skipped my shoes, so I could walk back out of the room quietly. Upon opening the door again, I saw that Keiko had continued to sleep soundly, and moved quietly out of the room. When a thought struck me, I tapped the door to check if it would let me back in. It said that I had no control over the room, so it wouldn't let me back in if the door closed.

To remedy this, I brought out one of my extra «Wolf-Tooth Swords» and propped it securely in the gap to keep the door open. Supposedly, items left on the ground would eventually break, but I didn't intend to be gone long. I tip-toed down the stairs and put my shoes on once I reached the bottom. Right in front of me stood an NPC. He only glanced at me before going back to what he was doing... which just happened to be staring blankly into the distance.

"Ok..." I mumbled. Not much personality in these ones. I stepped outside, after checking that this door would definitely let me enter again, and looked around. My conclusion was immediate. I was on a large farm. There were some animals around, clearly not the monster type. I wasn't sure if this was an Inner Area or not, since the system only informed players upon entering or exiting these places. After thinking for a moment, I unsheathed my sword. I tapped the point lightly toward the ground. It bounced back and the purple 『Immortal Object』 dialog appeared next to where I stabbed.

An Inner Area. Only in such an area would the ground be indestructible. So, this farm was within a town? I glanced around. It didn't seem like it, I could see a forest ahead, which stretched off to my left. On my left was a large plains area, with hills farther away to the right. There was little else to see. That meant that just this farm was a protected Inner Area. So, how did we get here? We were in the forest town «Harunka» the last time I could recall. I considered that the town may be back inside the forest ahead, but that wasn't it. The forest near «Harunka» was full of leafy trees. This one was all pine trees.

Wait, I'd gotten the floor map from Argo before we met Agatha. I pulled this map up and enlarged it, inspecting the area around me from a much more clear point of view. Though I couldn't see it from here, there was a large town very close by, just barely hidden from my view by the forest. It was called «Tolbana» and sat in a small area between the forest and hills. It seemed that opposite of here, in the plains, there was a valley which cut between the two geographic locations, as if separating them.

I zoomed the digital map out farther, and my eyes immediately locked onto a strange mark. There was a purple X sitting right on the line separating the forest and the valley, North of «Tolbana». What did the mark mean? I took a few steps forward, looking around again, but this time my eyes caught on another NPC. It was a middle-aged woman sitting in a rocking chair.

As soon as I looked at her, she lifted her head to face me, a large golden question mark appearing above her head. She had a quest. I left it alone for now, since I didn't want to get into anything without Keiko by my side. I already felt a little bit off, since I was probably getting near the fifty meter distance and I could feel the adverse affects of the «Stat Boost» passive skill, that seemed more like a leash than a boost, but whatever. I had no intention of moving away any farther anyway.

I walked back inside the large farm house and up the stairs, ignoring the NPC who hadn't seemed to move a muscle since I last saw him. I slid my spare sword out of the doorway and stashed it before entering. Then, I moved to wake up Keiko. Whatever had happened, our objective hadn't changed. Get stronger until we fight the boss. Looks like we would go out hunting today.

"But first," I said to the sleepy-eyed Keiko. "I really need to eat something."

It was about an hour later when we finally dressed, took the NPC's quest(which asked us to hunt a number of monsters in the pine forest to the north), left the farm house, and walked a good ways, we finally arrived at the town, no, this was clearly a city. It had a stone wall surrounding it all the way around and many buildings inside. We headed in through what I imagined to be the South gate, past a small number of other players who were leaving. Though the clock above my menu didn't show the current date, it did tell me that it was just 7:23 in the morning. These players were all heading out to go on their daily hunt, as we would as well, once we had eaten.

However, among the small number of people, who all cast us the usual amazed stares, there was one boy that stuck out to me. He also wore a leather coat, as opposed to the metal armor of everyone else. His hair was black and he sheathed his sword on his back instead of his waist. What caught my attention was the look he gave us. It wasn't like the others. He didn't just gawk at us like them. Instead, he had a strange melancholy in his eyes, which he averted when I tried to meet his gaze. I blinked at him a few times. What a strange player...

We passed by each other a short distance inside the gate, but didn't say anything, and kept going.


	32. Chapter 32

**Again?**** Chapter 32**

"Huuwwaaa." I fell with my back against a tree, letting out a big breath. "How many is that now?"

"I don't know, I stopped counting after two-hundred." Keiko plopped down next to me. We were hunting just outside Tolbana. North, by my own logic. There was an area with these monsters that looked like a cross between a fox and coyote right where the plains met the forest. They only came up to my waist, and were named 『Snarly』. Not exactly an intimidating name, but that was probably because they weren't very strong.

Well, ok, they actually were pretty strong. They were fast and dealt a lot of damage, but their health was low, so they never even stood a chance. They only took two strong sword skills to kill, so we had been using Klein's battle plan of both making a pass at it and taking them out without a hint of retaliation. Of course, I'd learned from the first time, so Keiko was leading every charge. Just like that, we had been slaughtering them in droves for the last twenty minutes.

There was no one else around, so we had all the rePops to ourselves, which was especially good since we gained experience as if we were both soloing. The «Blessed Twins» skill had some use after all. Our method was so fast that we actually cleared all the mobs and spent a good portion of the time waiting for them to respawn. It took less than five seconds to rush one, turn and hit the next, so we cleared the entire area in just a few minutes. It seemed that they took five minutes to respawn, so that left us with two or three minutes to catch our breath between runs.

While this was all well and good, hunting like normal, and not getting caught up in all sorts of strange situations for a day, it was bothersome. These mobs were pretty high level, according to Argo. We had traded the information on their level for the information of the exp, col, and maximum drops one 『Snarly』 would have, which was easy since Keiko _always_ got the max drops(Which was also why there was a huge mound of various furs, leathers, and claws piled up next to the tree we were resting under at the moment.)

The plan was to farm these monsters until we reached level 14, but we hadn't expected it to take so long. Each 『Snarly』gave 80 exp, which was high for monsters on the first floor(again, according to Argo.) However, we had gained so many levels off those crazily imbalanced wolves, that we had only gained one more level and still needed another twenty-thousand points before we would even reach level 13.

Our short break ended and we were about to launch ourselves at the next group of monsters when I heard something. It wasn't a quiet noise, like something we weren't supposed to hear, it was footsteps, approaching from a distance. I stood up to see who was coming. Only a few trees stood between me and the wide-open field before the city.

Still in the field was a boy who looked exactly the same age as me. In a moment, I realized that he was the same boy from before. The one with the black hair and the leather jacket. As he approached, I raised a hand in greeting. He did the same, though a slight look of confusion... no, it was a little different. It was like, was he wondering about something? It was still a bit hard to read a person's expression because they were ever so faintly different than in the real world.

"What's up?" said casually, but then something occurred to me. "Umm, if you wanted to farm these monsters, we kind of already took this area... but, no, we could share some if you really want them..." I was stuck between trying to express that we already had this area staked out, and doing the right thing and sharing them.

A look of realization spread across his face for a moment, but then he started waving his hands, "Ah, no that's not necessary. I'm just heading past here, is all."

I thought about that for a few seconds. "Past here? What's past here?" As far as I knew, there were just more woods, before the mountains at the edge of Aincrad.

"Well..." He thought for a minute. "I guess there's no trouble in telling you. I heard from Argo that there was something special up ahead.

"Special?"

"Yeah, apparently, someone told here there was something up this way, and I wanted to check it out."

Wait a minute... something didn't sound right. "Where exactly?" The boy brought up his map and turned it toward me. "No way! She really sold that information already? How much did she sell it for?"

"Wait, what? You were the ones who told her about it?" He asked with a shocked look. After a moment, his face went through a few complicated expressions and his eyes darted around, looking into the trees, at our faces, at the swords in our hands. Suddenly, his eyes hardened and he took a step back, hand moving to his sword.

I blinked at this strange boy a few times. What was he doing? He had suddenly started acting as if he was in danger. While the 『Snarlys』 did pretty high damage,(supposedly, neither of us had actually been hit) none were close enough to be near aggro range.

"So what's up ahead exactly?" he asked with a cautious tone.

"Well, you see, we don't actually know," I said, scratching the back of my head. "I wanted to farm some and reach level 14 before we headed up that way to check it out. But... it's taking longer than I thought. Hehehe..." I chuckled, rather embarrassed at not realizing something like that.

"No way, impossible..." the boy mumbled. He gulped slightly, then asked, "What level are you right now?"

"Twelve." I answered without pause. His mouth dropped open some.

"You...You, do you realize how many days it's been-"

"Ah, yeah, about that. We actually don't. What day is it exactly?" I asked, seeing an opportunity to find out just how many days we'd lost to the strange amnesia.

"Well, it's actually November 11 today. Friday in the real world."

"The eleventh? No way! We lost three whole days? That means we've been here for five days now. Just when do we get to fight the boss and go on?" I asked earnestly. My mind was already going back to my thoughts earlier. If it took much longer, the time to get to the end would be much longer than a year and a half.

"Well, we don't fight the boss until we find it..." the boy answered halfheartedly.

I thought for a moment. Until now, all I knew was, "get stronger, beat boss, get stronger, beat boss." No one had mentioned actually getting to the boss before. "Wait, we have to find the boss?"

Now it was the boy's turn to blink at me. "Of course. We have to go into the dungeon and fight our way through until we reach the boss room at a random location inside." He explained with an expression that said, 'you must know this already.'

"No way! Why didn't anyone mention that before? Where's the dungeon?"

A surprised look crossed his face, and his hand finally fell from his sword. "It's underneath that pillar there. He pointed behind us and I turned to look at the giant pillar that shot all the way to the next floor above our heads. "Beneath there is the dungeon, where we will find the boss. After defeating it, we climb the stairs inside that column all the way to the next floor and activate the teleport gate in the main city on the next floor." He explained it all in such a simple way, it made perfect sense now.

"Wow, that's all there is to it? Then why don't we go and find the boss already?" Keiko asked from my right.

"I know how you feel, I want to get out of here too..." he took a breath and went on. "There's a problem though. I already went and checked out the dungeon, but the entrance is shut tight. The entrance is in that valley over there," pointing in the general direction, "no one knows how to open it, so we're stuck. Argo messaged me just a little while ago and asked me to check out some info she got that caught her interest, because it was so close to the dungeon. So, I came here to check it out."

I nodded along as he spoke. It was all pretty simple, thinking about it that way. "However, I would love to know how you are already level twelve. How did you pull that one off?"

"Well, that's a really long story..." I said slowly. I didn't want to get into explaining because it would take a really long time. "You know the whole incident in «Harunka» yest- no, a few days ago?" He shook his head with a blank expression. "You, wait, what? You didn't even hear about it? How... really?" I thought that _everyone_ would know about that fiasco. Apparently not. "But, you had to be there, you have the same coat," my train of thought ended there, I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Ah, this? Yeah, I was in «Harunka», but only for part of a day, on the first day we were trapped here..." his words trailed off for some reason. He picked back up again with, "I haven't really been in contact with anyone for the last few days. Players just started arriving in this town yesterday, and I was contacted by Argo this morning asking about investigating that information, because someone had apparently spotted me in the area." It was actually amazing, how well he could explain thing simply enough for me to understand.

"So that's the situation..." his piece had given me a much better broad view of the state of Aincrad in these first few days.

"Well, I guess it's not surprising that people finally got sick of the overcrowding in «Harunka». In fact, I'm surprised they took so long to come here," Keiko voiced an opinion that mirrored my own.

"Yeah, that town was not meant to hold more than a thousand people," I shot back.

"Wow, there were that many people there?" the black-haired boy asked.

"Well, I'm not really sure, but for a few days, the town was standing room only. The woods around it too."

"Huh, now I'm really glad I got there early," the boy said in a low voice while touching the handle of his sword.

Of course, that made me wonder. "That sword, what kind is it?"

"«Anneal Blade +1»"

"+1?" I mimicked back at him, turning it into a question.

"Ah, that is, «1D»"

I continued staring at him for a few more moments before asking, "What does that mean?"

The boy's eyebrows pulled together in a look of concern. "I'm talking about the reinforcement stats."

Again, another term I didn't understand. Of course, I was basically used to this by now, so I just kept questioning the strange new terms this person spewed out until he realized I had no idea what he was talking about and explained.

"Ok, reinforcing a weapon makes it stronger. There are four classifications of reinforcement: Sharpness, Durability, Accuracy, and Quickness. Sharpness causes a weapon to deal more damage, but makes the weapon heavier. Durability makes a weapon harder to break, but it also increases the weight, by a lot more than Sharpness. Accuracy makes the system assist help more to align your strike with where you want to aim, this helps to score critical hits. Quickness decreases the time it takes to activate a sword skill and increases the speed of the swing. It also decreases the delay after a sword skill by a bit if you reinforce it enough. However, too much Quickness and you won't be able to really control your attacks anymore."

I nodded along. "So, how do you actually reinforce weapons? And can you do anything else? Like armor?"

"No, no armor, only weapons can be reinforced. To reinforce a weapon, you have to take it to a blacksmith. Player smiths are preferable, but it's still too early for anyone to have started training a skill like that. You give them the sword and ask them to reinforce it. The smith puts the weapon into a furnace until it get hot, puts it on the anvil and hits it with their hammer ten times. Then the weapon reinforcement either succeeds or fails. The ways to increase chance of success are by getting a more experienced smith, which is why players are better, since NPC smiths have only the most basic skills. Or, you can collect all the items listed in the weapon's reinforcement window."

A "huh?" sound escaped my mouth at the last part of that. "How do I find the weapon's reinforcement window?" I asked immediately.

"Just put your fingers together like you're opening your menu, them press them to your weapon and pull them apart," he said while unsheathing his sword and doing just as he explained. A small window opened just above his sword, quickly disappearing when he resheathed the blade.

I followed his example and pulled up my sword's stats window. It listed the weapon's name, sword type, attack, durability, and strength requirements. "Wait a minute... Isn't this the same as..." I pulled open my menu and switched to the items tab. I tapped one of the other «Wolf-Tooth Swords»(which I had fifteen of now, for some strange reason.) It was immediately apparent that the small window which appeared above the item in my inventory was identical to the one on the sword in my hand. I sighed loudly. So, I already knew how to do that?

"Mmmm, if I had to guess, I'd say you just opened the same window from inside your inventory. That's the other way to inspect a weapon."

Of course, there was still one thing I was missing. "So, how do I get the the reinforcement window?" I asked.

"Ah, for that, you tap the window and hit Reinforcement." After waving away my main menu, I did as he said and tapped the window over my sword. A little drop-down menu came up with 『Decoration』 and 『Reinforcement』 as the only options. I tapped the second and the window flashed to show new information. There were a few things listed. At the top, it said 『+0』 with all of the attributes he had described to me below, all with another 『+0』 next to them. Then there were two strange lines I didn't really understand. First was 『Maximum Reinforcement attempts』, followed by a similar, 『Remaining Reinforcement Attempts』Both had a 7 next to them. Then, there was a short list of things. Chipped tooth, torn leather, and couple more, all with a number next to them as well.

The black-haired boy walked closer, looking at the window. "Ok, the list here explains what items you need to boost the probability of success as high as it will go."

"Items boost the probability of success?" I asked. He'd said that before, but hadn't really explained it. How did having items help?

As if reading my mind, "So, as I said, if you collect those items and give them to the blacksmith, they can put it all into their furnace and when they heat the weapon, it will increase the chance of succeeding."

"Oh..." I thought about it for a minute. Why would I need to collect items like that? For me, reinforcing a weapon would never work. However, if I needed it reinforced I could just give it to Keiko and never fail. Of course, that kind of logic wouldn't work for anyone else, as a thing like 'chance' meant just that. 'Chance.' Unlike me where it only came down to 'Me=Failure' and 'Keiko=Success'.

"Well, thanks for explaining that to us... hmm. These look familiar. What kind of items are these exactly?"

"They're the trash mats that are usually sold back to shops to get a bit more money from hunting trips." He added on, "You guys are complete beginners at games aren't you?" We nodded together, it really was obvious, wasn't it?

"Wait, you mean..." I thought for a moment, then turned, pointing. "Like these?"

The boy stepped sideways to look around me, at the chest-high pile of trash mats on the ground.

"OH MY— WHAT? HOW?!" He gaped in shock.

"You want them? We ran out of space a while ago," I commented. There was probably too much there for us to even carry it all back to the city.

"Really?" Suddenly, a pained expression crossed his face. He looked at the pile longingly, then gulped. "Yes!" He started digging through the pile with great fervor, picking out various things he came across. As he dug, he continued speaking, "how long have you been farming this area? If you leave this stuff here too long, it'll disappear."

"Well, for a little while, I guess." Thinking back on it now, we actually hadn't been here very long by other people's standards. Other people would fight monsters for a whole day to get this much stuff, but due to Keiko's 'always get max drops' luck, we had this kind of pile long before the first ones were due to vanish from the bottom. In fact, if what I'd heard about most things disappearing in about an hour was right, we had about another half-hour before we had to head back in order to not lose any of it.

"Hmm, well, in return, how about you bring us with you to that place you're going to investigate? But also, could you help us carry this back? It'll be a short trip and we can reinforce our weapons as well." The boy nodded earnestly. After splitting up the pile and distributing it between each of us, it turned out that we _still_ couldn't carry it all.

"Oh, I know what to do!" I exclaimed. Weapons and armor had much more durability than regular trash mats. On top of that, they also weighed much, much more. So, I pulled open my inventory selected all of the spare «Wolf-Tooth Swords». Then, I dragged them out and dumped them all over the ground with a squall of crashing metal.

The black-haired boy looked at me with a disbelieving expression. "Y, you guys are really beginners at this?"

"Yup. First game we've ever played!" I responded with exaggerated cheerfulness. It turned out all those swords took up a full quarter of our inventory, so we managed to stow a whole lot more of the trash mats. It was enough for us to carry the rest back with us.

"We'll just pick those back up on our way back," Keiko noted.

Overloaded with far more weight than we would normally be able to carry, our maximum movement speed was reduced to a slow walking pace as we made our way back to «Tolbana».

Author's Note: 32 chapters to cover 6 days... Any loyal readers out there, it's not just you- I really want to know where this story is going as well... -_-;


	33. Chapter 33

**Investigation**** Chapter 33**

After returning to town, we split up, agreeing to meet up again back at the gate in twenty minutes. The town was nearly empty, as anyone who had made it here was out hunting at this time of day. For once, I didn't feel stares aimed at me from every direction. It was really nice. We made it to the general store and sold off all the trash mats, bringing in a really nice sum of money. As soon as that burden was lifted, we shot over to the closest blacksmith(the town was actually big enough to have more than one) and went inside.

I unequipped my sword and placed it back in our item section, while Keiko approached the counter. She held out her sword and asked the blacksmith to reinforce it up to +7. He asked if she had any materials and she replied "No." The total fee was 3000 Col for all the reinforcements. Once she had pulled the money from her inventory, Keiko placed it on the counter. She handed the blade to the NPC and he asked what kind of reinforcement she wanted.

"Ummm..." She looked over at me, but I shrugged my shoulders. "Hmm, if sharpness increases damage, durability makes it not break, accuracy helps it hit, and quickness makes it faster..." She thought for a minute more in silence while the NPC waited patiently. "How about three Sharpness, two Durability, and two Quickness?" I noticed she ignored accuracy. Probably because she had no problem hitting where she wanted to hit. Hell, I bet even if she wasn't sure where to aim, her luck would even help with that.

The smith nodded and inserted the sword into the furnace, waiting a few moments for it to glow a bright orange before removing it and striking down with his hammer repeatedly. After ten strikes, the glow turned blue and strengthened for a moment before vanishing all at once. Again, the sword moved into the furnace, the hammer came down, and a blue glow lit the room. The whole process repeated the full seven times until he handed the sword back to Keiko and she tilted forward for a moment under the weight. "Heavy..." she said in a low voice. She returned the sword to its sheath, then to our inventory.

Pulling out the other, she repeated the same conversation, already taking out the 3000 Col required when the smith asked. She handed over the blade, and when asked, I said I'd take the same reinforcements. She handed over the sword and it went through the whole process as well. After receiving it from the NPC, she passed the sword to me. "Woah, you're right. It is heavy." It wasn't like I wouldn't be able to use it, like before when it had weighed a ton and I could barely lift it, but a sword this heavy would be much more difficult to swing as I wanted during a fight. "We'll need to raise our STR some more," I noted. That wouldn't be a problem, the last time I checked, we had another nine spare points to distribute.

We walked back out of the shop and quickly hurried to the meeting place by the gate. A look at the clock told me that we were already ten minutes late. As soon as we saw the black-haired boy standing there with an annoyed look on his face, we ran up, shouting apologies.

"What took you guys so long? Did you get lost?" he asked. His voice said he wouldn't believe us if we answered 'yes'."

"Well, the NPC took a while to reinforce both of our weapons," Keiko said.

"But it only takes a minute to do that..." he said in a skeptical voice.

"Yeah, but it really adds up when they do it fourteen times over," she came back.

"What?!" You used up all your attempts?"

"Huh? What do you mean, 'attempts'?"

"Ahh... I forgot to explain that before. Although, you should know it now after using them all. Weapons all have a maximum number of attempts. The seven I told you about before wasn't the maximum it could reach, but the maximum number of times you could try." He stopped for a few moments, as if trying to decide something. Then, "So, what did they wind up at?" he asked with a worried expression.

Keiko blinked at him twice, confused, but answered, "Well, +7 of course."

"You succeeded fourteen times in a row?! Did you really have all the materials you needed for all that?"

"Well, no, but that's not a problem. I'm lucky," she said in a perfectly nonchalant tone.

"Lucky?" his eyebrow twitched.

"Yeah. If it's a matter of luck, of course I'll succeed."

"That's why I had her do mine," I added in.

"Well, getting away from that subject... how about we get going." For some reason, he had a downcast expression now. He started walking toward the gate and we picked up beside him.

We made our way across the stretch of field, into the forest, and walked until we found our pile of swords. The blades were all thrown back into our inventory, filling it up to 33% again, and we moved on. We stayed close to the side of the ravine as we walked, looking down from time to time when we saw people moving in the valley below.

I held the map, having brought it out as a big paper one for convenience. Despite seemingly being paper, it could still be manipulated like the regular map, so I had it zoomed in to show the immediate area around us. In one corner, was us, the other corner holding the little X we were wondering about. We met a couple groups of monsters, and decided to fight through them, since we would lose more time going around.

I put away the map and drew my sword, but it still felt pretty heavy. Oh well, it'll be fine as long as there are three of us here, I thought to myself. Besides, as soon as I swung it, the system assist would take over anyway. The monsters here were tall plant types, made mostly of vines.

There were only a couple that we would need to fight through, so Keiko and I picked the closest target at the same time. She took up position in front and we charged in. "W,wait! Idiots," a call came from behind. A moment later, we moved into the monster's aggro range and the ground suddenly shook beneath my feet. I jabbed my sword forward, Keiko following my motion though she couldn't even see me. Our swords began to glow and in a moment, we both launched forward into the «Sonic Leap» sword skill. Our bodies were suddenly pulled forward, up into the air much faster than we could possibly run, and shot past the monster.

Behind, numerous vines shot up from the ground, lashing all around. That would have really hurt if it hit us. After our strikes hit nothing but air, we turned back. I shouted a "Sorry," at our distressed companion while we headed back toward the plant monster. That was the first time a monster had launched a surprise attack on us.

However, that appeared to be the only strong thing about it. As we moved back into range, it snapped its long vine arms and me and I parried the blows easily. Even with my too-heavy sword, the monster wasn't very fast. Once it had finished, I cut into its midsection with a «Horizontal» and «Slant». I actually noticed the difference in the delay after each skill, despite how short it was already. The two points of Quickness really did make a difference, because my blade seemed to travel even faster now than when I had boosted it myself earlier.

However, the increased difficulty of wielding the sword caused me to take longer moving between the two sword skills, and in the end, it felt like it actually made unleashing the combo take longer, despite reduction in time to slash, and the delay after.

I barely managed to finish and bring my sword back to defend myself when the plant began its next attack. Unlike the 『Snarlys』 from earlier, these monsters had much more health. My two attacks had only taken about a tenth of its hp away. Vines swung in from both sides and I stepped back quickly, bringing my sword low, and launching an «Uppercut» to catch them both in the middle. I kicked off from the ground and knocked the plant monster way off balance, nearly landing on its... head? It was a strange looking knobby thing, but kind of seemed like it would be its head, since it vaguely resembled a human.

I kicked those thoughts from my head while I shouted "«Switch»!" There was hardly a need, as Keiko was already rushing in with her blade holding shimmering green glow. She flew forward and slashed down along the monster's large body. After the brief delay, she slowly hefted her sword and positioned it for another sword skill. Way too slow, I noticed. It took her a good three seconds to do something a flick of her wrist should have accomplished.

Are our Strength stats not meeting the requirement for these swords anymore?

"Keiko, back off!" I shouted, jumping up, then bringing my sword down the entire length of the monster's body. I'd figured if our swords were a bit heavier, we could just ignore it. However, it was now obvious that the extra weight was seriously impacting our ability to fight. "Hey, can you cover us for a bit?" I called to the boy who had been standing with a kind of stunned look.

"Sure!" he replied and moved in. Again, I parried the monster's attack to create and opening and called "«Switch»!" The black-haired boy ran in, his sword glowing red. He jumped into the air, holding onto his skill until the last moment, and unleashed a wickedly fast slash straight through the monster. I couldn't even see his sword, only the red line that trailed after. In a moment, the entire monster exploded, the single attack having taken out all its remaining health.

"Wow."

We backed off, explaining that our swords were too heavy now. Upon opening the weapons' windows, I saw why. Now listed as 『Wolf-Tooth Sword +7』, the Strength requirement had increased to six points. I only had five. From the looks of it, Keiko had even less. "Well that explains it."

"Wait, you guys don't have that much STR yet? What are your stats?" the boy asked. Since the stats window didn't have a visibility toggle in the corner, I had to switch to main window visibility option. I tapped 『Show all』 on the list of settings, since he wasn't in our party, nor on my friend list. Again changing back to my stats window, he hesitated.

"Umm, you know... it's kind of private... showing all your information to someone..." he muttered. I just shrugged. He slowly moved forward and peeked over my shoulder. His eyes ran over the information in the window while numerous jingling sounds to the other side indicated that Keiko was fiddling with something in her own menu.

Finishing, the boy stepped back with a contemplating look. "Hmm, so you're those kind of players," he said in a low voice, his hand cradling his chin as he thought.

"Mmm, what does that mean?" I asked.

"You hold onto your attribute points when you level up until you feel you need them. I've never been like that, I always spend them as soon as I level up, but there are advantages to both methods."

"I,is that so..." I stammered. "Well, it's actually more like I just forgot about it until this point..." I scratched the back of my head while letting out an awkward laugh. His face darkened, but he didn't say anything. Although, for some reason it felt like there was a big word hanging in the air around us.

NOOB

"Hehehe, let's just put points into Strength until our swords feel like they did before, ok?" I said to Keiko, nervous sweat running down my face. She nodded and we held our swords out, hitting the (+) on Strength. I hit it three times, bringing my Strength up to Eight points before the feeling in my arm clicked. It was just about back to the same feeling as before. It wasn't extremely light, I felt that having a sword that was too light would make it feel weak, or like it couldn't take a hit.

How to explain it... It was like when I picked up a stick in the woods as a kid. If it was really skinny and light, I knew it would break as soon as I hit it against a tree. If it felt a bit heavy, I knew it would last. Somehow, I had the same kind of feeling as back then. It was probably childish, these were swords, not little sticks that a kid would play with, but for some reason, they gave off the same kind of feeling...

So, I stopped once I had Eight points of Strength and put the Six remaining points into Agility. My second stat raised to Twenty-Six points and as before, a lightness came over my body for a few moments until I adjusted. I swung my sword around easily again. It was still heavier than before, but only marginally. This time, it would definitely not interfere with my usage of the weapon.

"Much better," Keiko said from next to me.

We moved back into the monsters' area and cut through the ones that got in our way. Before, I had thought we were getting pretty good at fighting in this world. But now... I wasn't so sure. Having seen others fight, it felt like we were about the same level. But this guy... absolutely incredible. Every time he landed a blow, he hacked off a sizable chunk of hp, two or three times more than either Keiko or myself could manage. After we passed through the monsters, I asked him about it.

He said that you had to throw yourself into your sword skills. Don't just let the system assist do it for you. Also, just boosting the sword skill wasn't enough either. You actually had to know how to swing the sword yourself. When your motions matched the system assist perfectly, then you would do much more damage than normal. We both looked at him boggle-eyed. This guy really was amazing at this. When he saw our amazing looks, he turned away, a slight blush in his cheeks. He mumbled something like "What? I've been practicing a lot..." or something like that.

I pulled the map out again and saw that we were getting close. The mark was only a little more than a hundred meters away. We passed through the last bit of distance and came out in a little clearing. It was just a few meters across, apparently with nothing in it.

"An empty clearing?" the boy asked. "What's special about an empty clearing?"

"I have no idea," I replied, confused myself. When I saw that mark I was expecting... well, I don't really know what I was expecting. But I was definitely expecting _something_.

"Where did you get the info anyway?"

"No idea. We had it in our map data when we woke up this morning," I responded.

"Hmm..." Keiko took a couple steps into the center of the open space and looked all around. Then she walked over to the cliff and looked down. "Hey, what's that?" she asked. With our eyebrows drawing close together in confused looks, we both walked over to see what she was looking at. Below, the valley suddenly ended with a large gray structure.

"It's the entrance to the dungeon!" the boy exclaimed. "This spot is actually right above it. There must be something special here after all..."

"Mmm, but what?" I asked skeptically. The top of the smooth-sided building was about fifteen meters or so below, probably too far to jump down. You'd be lucky to survive a fall like that.

"What's that, right there?" I followed Keiko's outstretched finger as we all knelt down, hanging over the edge. She was pointing at a little spot just atop the entrance.

A button. It was clearly a button.

"A button on the roof directly above the entrance? Even _I_ know that that means," I said in a small voice.

"A switch to open the gate. We have to hit that button somehow..." the black-haired boy looked like he was trying to figure out a way down the cliff—

Or not. He suddenly stood and walked a couple paces away, picking up a rock from the ground. We stood to the side as he moved back to the edge of the cliff and threw the rock down toward the button. Without any sort of system assist, it missed by at least five meters.

"Darn, it's just a little too far to hit without system assist. Fifteen meters is the limit without the weapon throwing skill. That will increase the distance depending on the skill's level... It's no good, I've filled both my skill slots already." He looked at us and raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry, we used both of ours also," I answered his silent question, scratching the back of my head again.

"But, you're level 12 now. You unlock your third slot at level 12," he stated flatly.

"Woah! Really?" I exclaimed. I quickly opened my skills menu and looked. Sure enough, a new blank slot had appeared between 『Sprint』 and 『Blessed Twins』. I noticed the black-haired boy looking at my menu from the other side with an unreadable expression, but ignored it. I tapped the blank skill and the window with the huge list of skills appeared.

"So, if we choose «Weapon Throwing» as our third skill, we'll be able to hit that button and open the dungeon?" Keiko asked, operating her menu as well.

Quickly turning his attention away from me, a surprised look crossed the boy's face for a moment before he nodded. After filtering out all the stuff I couldn't use(which was a lot less than the last time I looked at this list) I had a smaller list where I quickly located «Weapon Throwing». The information window explained how it expanded the use of thrown weapons, as well as allowing the use of specialized weapons like throwing daggers. It also mentioned that it provided more information while locked onto monsters, depending on the skill's level.

I dragged it over into my third skill slot with a 'ding!' sound and closed my menu. He tossed me a rock and I leaned over the edge, ensuring I had stable footing and wouldn't fall when I threw the rock. I brought it up toward my shoulder, focusing my gaze on the small button below. A light blue glow entered the very edge of my peripheral vision. Since I didn't really trust myself to boost a skill like this, I just let the system assist take over from there. My hand shot forward and the rock flew through the air leaving a blue trail behind it.

"Klack!" it banged into the top of the roof and bounced directly off of the button I'd been aiming at. Far below, I heard a low rumbling, and could just make out the dungeon door opening on the wall below. I jumped up, pumping my fist into the air and shouting, "All right!" But when I landed, my left foot slipped from the edge—

Four hands shot out to grab the back of my shirt.

"Idiot Onii-chan!"

"Don't jump at the edge of the cliff!"

"Ehehehe... sorry about that..." I chuckled, embarrassed as they dragged me away from the cliff edge.

Author's note: I couldn't recall anyone mentioning a limit on throwing distance in SAO, only ALO, (could anyone tell me if it was there, but I missed it?) So, I figured this would work.


	34. Chapter 34

**December Chapter 34**

After opening the dungeon entrance, the area soon flooded with players. Many stormed in, but too many never came out again. Keiko and I stuck around «Tolbana», and watched the population of the city spike up drastically in those first days, then slowly begin to decline as most of the players going into the dungeon fell to its traps and strong monsters. As each day passed, a sense of anxiety began to well up in my chest. If we were losing this many players on just the first floor, how would we ever make it to the top?

According to the «Weekly Argo»,(Argo had managed to create a newspaper that the NPCs sold in every town, although exactly _how_ she did so was a complete mystery because her running price for the information was One-Million Col) the «Starting City» held about a third of the population of Aincrad. Those were the players who were just going to shut themselves in and avoid any possible chance of dying to a monster. Of course, I didn't understand why they were doing such a thing. Without their help, how were we going to get out of here?

Of the Six Thousand who did set out to clear this game, nearly Two Thousand had died in just these first few weeks. At that rate, there would be no one left to fight inside of three months. Those Three Thousand people in the «Starting City» would never gain any ground. They would be trapped here for the rest of their lives...

As I sat next to the bed in our small inn room, I did as I did every day. I considered how things were going in the whole of Aincrad. That was the source of my growing anxiety, because at our current pace, I couldn't see success ahead, only a complete failure. Failure ending with the deaths of every soul trapped in this «Death Game». I could not let the happen. Not to Keiko. Even if I couldn't make it out, she would definitely see the real world again one day.

I considered if the world was watching us from the outside. It was a thought that struck me from time to time. The government had definitely taken down Argus by now, seeing that they broke who knows how many laws with this whole scheme. That meant that they had the actual servers now. That brought a grin to my face. I knew what servers were now, something that I had absolutely no idea about just a month ago.

If the government had the servers, they probably couldn't turn them off or do anything with them to help us. However, I always wondered if they couldn't plug into a server and pull out some of the stuff happening in here. The whole world in here was a 3D environment. So, what if they were able to pull that out and actually watch? If that was the case, I wonder what they would think? If they saw the way things are going...

As my mind wandered away farther, I continued to wonder about that. Would they show scenes of our lives here on the news in the real world? What if my parents were watching? Of course, unlike everyone else, my parents would never see me in here if they were, since Keiko and myself were the only two in this whole world with imaginary avatars.

A thought played through my mind, everyone outside watching the news, when some sort of 'daily situation inside Sword Art Online' would come on and inform them that so far, we had failed to do anything at all, besides losing 20% of the entire population. If we were having such a hard time moving forward in here, how hard would they take it out there?

Of course, such a thought turned my mind again to trying to clear the dungeon. No way. If we went in there, we definitely would not survive. Despite (probably) being the highest level players in this whole world at the moment, I just could not go into an area with traps designed to kill someone. I would trigger every last trap if I went into such a place. That was why I hadn't stepped foot into the dungeon in this past month and just kept farming field mobs day in and day out.

Of course, it took _forever_ to level up at this point. I was now level 15, with a grand total of 472500 Experience points. I needed just a little bit more to reach level 16. Of course, the following level would be farther off than ever. Each time we raised our level again, it took a few days longer to amass the huge sum of points we needed to reach the next one. I had gained a total of Forty-Five points, of which I'd put 8 points into my Strength, and 37 into Agility.

Since we had so many «Wolf-Tooth Swords» Keiko had reinforced a number of them in different ways. This gave us the opportunity to test exactly how different reinforcements affected the sword. In the end, we stuck with the first swords she reinforced anyway. We still carried the others, though. Neither of us could bring ourselves to sell them, despite the huge going rate for such powerful swords. We just couldn't forget the feeling we'd had back at that time, when we didn't have any weapons.

For that reason, having sixteen spare swords in our inventory (as strange as it may sound) went a long way to setting us at ease. Besides just killing monsters to gain levels, we had started watching our skill proficiencies increase as well. As it turned out, our skill proficiencies were equal as well, but seemed to progress a bit slowly for each of us, so we both had to use the skill for it to increase. That was no problem, since we both had the same skills set.

At the moment, my «One-Handed Sword» was up to 41 points. «Sprint» seemed to increase faster, and was already 69. As for «Weapon Throwing», it took a lot of hits to kill an enemy at first, so progress was kind of slow. However, once our proficiencies reached 10 points, we unlocked the skill to throw three projectiles at once. Of course, that was easier said than done when using throwing daggers, so we had needed to search around and find throwing needles instead.

With the increased clear speed, our pace picked up. We hadn't trained the skill for as long as our others, but something unexpected happened from there. Because it took six needles to kill a «Snarly»,(our usual farming mob) as opposed to just two sword skills, «Weapon Throwing» increased at a much faster pace than our «One-handed Sword». Just the other day, it had actually passed our first skill and now sat at level 42. I sighed lightly. While these numbers felt high to me right now, I would need to get much, much stronger. This was still just the beginning. We hadn't even cleared the first of one hundred floors. That's to say, in a month, our percent of completion in this game wasn't even at 1% yet.

One month. Well, not quite. Today was December 2. It would be the one month anniversary of SAO in just four more days. And that was a problem. Word had been going around for a little while that on the one month anniversary, if we still hadn't cleared this floor, there was going to be a mass suicide. While I had no idea how many actually intended to go through with it, just the thought of such a thing sent shivers up my spine. In the first few days, there had been quite a few suicides. But planned, scheduled, mass suicide?

Of course, I could understand where these people were coming from. My original hopes of passing floors in a number of days had been crushed long ago. Five days? Hah! If every floor took so long, it wouldn't matter what we did. We would all wind up dying before we made it to the top. A body could only stay in a coma for so long before it just rotted away. At thirty days per floor, that put us at around eight years to clear this game. I didn't think my body in the real world would last that long. In fact, even after just this month, the affects of the coma were probably appearing already.

Luckily, a ping diverted my attention before I could imagine exactly what those changes would be. I glanced up at the message icon and opened it. Since Argo was the only one on my friends list, I knew it was her without having to check the sender.

『Come to the Town Center at 4:00 pm.』 Cool, she must have come to «Tolbana» today, so we'd be getting the two thousand Col she owed us for the various information we'd supplied on the mobs around the city. Not that we really needed it, we'd saved up nearly three-hundred thousand Col over the last month alone. Of course, at this point in the game that was an obscene amount of money.

We managed to pull it all in because everyone needed the materials we got from the «Snarlys» to upgrade their swords. (Unsurprisingly, it turned out that most low level swords needed the «Dull Claw», «Rough Fur», and «Torn Leather» that the «Snarly» dropped to increase reinforcement success.)

At first, everyone had swarmed our favorite hunting ground, and we couldn't kill monsters properly. They had all bought the information on where to find materials, and Argo had told them about the spot where there was a monster that, killing a single one _could_ yield four «Dull Claws», eight «Rough Furs», and three «Torn Leathers». Of course, that sounded incredible to someone who only needed about ten or twenty of each.

They all wanted the materials the monster dropped, so we couldn't kill the monsters there very well. However, they quickly realized that while the «Snarly» _could_ drop a lot of everything they needed, the «Drop Rate» was incredibly low. They quickly moved onto other areas with higher drop chances, even if they couldn't collect all the materials in the same place.

When we realized just how much everyone wanted the materials, we decided to make a business out of it. In truth, it was only partially to make money. The other reason was to help everyone else strengthen their weapons. If we could easily collect all the materials they needed, why sell them for dirt cheap to an NPC merchant when we could get a decent amount from other players for something they desperately needed. So, we asked Argo about it.

She was in a far-eastern merchant town at the time, and bought us the «Vendor's Carpet» sold there on credit, then charged us nearly every Col we had the next time she visited «Tolbana». From there on, we sold the mountain of materials we collected each day while hunting off our carpet and made back all the money spent, and more. The quality of weapons in the city increased greatly, but it didn't seem to be enough to keep everyone who kept trying to clear the dungeon from dying.

Of course, we didn't hide where we got the materials. Everyone knew we were hunting «Snarlys», but they also knew that no one else had gotten any materials out of them. This led to the unintended side-effect of our wildly popular business. We immediately earned the nickname the «Lucky Twins». While the nickname wasn't exactly right, it stuck. I shrugged it off, but it made Keiko happy. Being able to help other people with her luck wasn't something she got to do very often. In fact, it had usually had the opposite effect—

Her luck would come at the expense of others. Like finding money on the street. It didn't appear out of thin air, someone had to have lost that money for her to find it. And she found a lot of money. A few years back, she had realized the problem and started to avoid things based on luck, to give everyone else a chance. The way things were shaping up here in Aincrad, Keiko would be happy as long as we could keep helping out like this.

Although, helping everyone get materials was definitely a step down from actually helping to get through the dungeon. Apparently, it was a twisting maze that you would get lost in immediately without a map. There were several floors stacked closely one on top of another. Last I'd heard, the farthest anyone had gone was around the nineteenth dungeon floor. They were closing in on the boss room, it was just a matter of time before it was discovered. Though, how many more would die in there before that happened? But now that I thought about it, I wasn't really sure what went into killing a boss. This was the first time, first time.

I sighed deeply. I would love to go in to clear the dungeon, but it was just way too dangerous. Even before we started selling the materials, the main reason we were fighting the «Snarlys» was because they weren't tamable, nor did they transform into giant boss monsters. We had found out the hard way that that was the case with a number of other mobs in the area. Of course, we hadn't tried fighting any of those giant monsters, since we were fast enough to run away now. Essentially, our current pattern had zero risk. We hadn't suffered so much as a scratch in the last month. It made me comfortable thinking just how long it had been since my hp bar had moved from 100%.

Right now, the plan was to get stronger... but what about fighting the boss? It had always been: 'get stronger to fight the boss, move up, get stronger to fight the next boss.' However, wasn't it impossible without going through the dungeon? If we weren't going to kill the boss, then besides helping others with mats, what was the point of fighting in the fields?

I sat for a minute, but couldn't think of anything. Then, my last thought reminded me of something else. I checked the time, and shot up from my seat on the floor. It was already after 7:00 am. We had to get going if we wanted to reach level 16 today before coming back and selling our loot, since we now had an appointment with Argo at 4:00 pm.

I quickly woke Keiko, who looked up at me sleepily for a bit before getting up, and we set off. We moved at a full sprint out to our farming spot, part of the reason «Sprint» was our highest level skill. It got us there in just five minutes, compared to the usual twenty-five at a normal walking pace.

We cut down the mobs as fast as we could, using both swords and throwing needles to kill them even faster. While at first it had taken almost three minutes to clear the twenty or so monsters, it now took just about one minute. We kept at it, right until we reached level 16, then grabbed up all the loot and ran off, without even finishing off the rest of the mobs.

Of course, we had boosted our agility while only taking enough points in strength to make our swords feel right in our grip. That left us with really low carrying space in our inventory, especially when you considered that almost 20% of it was taken up by all our spare swords. That left us needing to carry most of the loot back, which meant the pace was much slower. We more than the normal twenty-five minutes due to the «Over-encumbered» status, which greatly reduced our movement speed.

Finally reaching the town, we laid out our wares and were soon swarmed by other players. We couldn't even sell it all off quickly enough, so when time was nearly up, we rolled up our «Vendor's Carpet», and were on our way, just leaving all our stuff there and saying, 'sorry, we have to go,' and letting everyone fight over the stuff we left all over the ground. Can't say its a scene I cared to create in the middle of a busy street, but we absolutely couldn't be late to a meeting with Argo.

We ran through the town, reaching the town's center at exactly 4:00 pm.

Author's Note: I _finally_ finished, sorry for the delay.

Also, I was rereading and fact-checking myself when I found something I got very wrong. Turns out no one made it to «Tolbana» until the third week, not the third day. But oh well, it doesn't really change much I guess, so I'll just leave it.

Oh yeah, and FIRST TIME SKIP! Even if it was only a month...


	35. Chapter 35

**«First Floor Boss Strategy Conference»** **Chapter 35**

"Uwaa, we made it just in time," Keiko sighed dramatically.

"Haha yeah, we did cut it a bit close there," I shot back. We stood at the outer edge of the town center. The whole thing was inset into the ground, the center stage at the bottom. It was an old Greek or Roman looking building, just beginning to fall apart by the look of it. One side was a wall with a couple doors going out the back, another door to each side. I hadn't come to this area much, so I didn't know where those led.

Across from the straight, gray stone building, big semicircle seating expanded around the rest of the area, moving upward like bleachers. Again, all gray stone. There were a few sets of stairs spread throughout, since walking up the seating would be awkward due to the size of the seats and the drop from each seat to the next. While I say 'seats' there wasn't actually anything like seats used. It was all one long, curved piece of stone, as if the entire area had been carved out of a single, huge boulder.

The openness gave the area a very relaxed atmosphere, and I saw that there were numerous players sitting all around on the semicircle, mostly in clumps of five and six. There were more than there should be at a time like this. At night, this kind of place would be flooded with players, eating before they headed off to sleep for the day. It was a good area to relax in, though I personally avoided it.

As time had passed, I had become more aware of everyone's stares. They had been making me more uncomfortable than before. I couldn't go into such a crowded open area, where everyone in the bleachers would stare at me. Instead, I stuck to the outlying windmills. Keiko went along with this. She hadn't said anything, but I had a feeling that the constant stares were getting to her too.

As my eyes traveled over the crowd with their backs to me, I didn't immediately see Argo. However, I did spot a familiar face, mostly because it was the only face pointed _toward_ us. Diabel was standing in the middle of the stage, arms at his sides while he seemed to wait patiently for something. Then, a movement caught my gaze. A hooded figure was waving at us. I realized it was Argo, standing halfway out of sight, in the far right corner of the Colosseum. She was nearly the shade of the doorway, with the neighboring staircase keeping her out of the line of sight of most of the players below us.

Together, we moved around the outside of the seats, keeping out of view of everyone there. We dropped down from the top of the stairs, landing lightly next to Argo from a height that would have caused some damage if this wasn't an Inner Area.(well, if we didn't have so much AGI anyway) She as I'd noticed before, she had a dark green half-cloak on, dark clothing mostly obscured beneath. From what I could tell, she wasn't wearing any protective armor. Granted, this was a town, so there was no real reason to. But still, wearing armor had always given both Keiko and I a sense of security, like all the extra swords.

"You're late," were the first words out of her mouth.

"No, you said to be here at 4:00 pm," I replied quickly, "we were here on time, looking for you."

Argo stared hard at me for a minute. "Fine."

"Well anyway, what's going on here, Argo-san?" I asked, tilting my head toward the assembly to my left.

"You'll see, it's just about time..." she didn't give me a straight answer. Oh well, if it was about to start, we would know soon enough. I peaked my head out from behind the stairs to get a look at the crowd. Most were dressed in regular cloth clothes like mine, with leather, or iron, armor. Some even had a mix of both.

Diabel had obviously upgraded his equipment from that old iron chest plate he had the last time we'd seen him. He had a blue coat, which looked like it had run him a pretty good chunk of Col. It even had a pattern of yellow lines running down the front and along the hem. Strangely, it was split and fell asymmetrically, with the longer portion wrapping around his side facing toward me. White gloves, and pants complemented his coat. Both looked rather expensive as well.

Taking the place of his single iron chest plate, he now had brown bronze armor, with a slight shine, all bounded with thick leather trim. The chest plate and heavy double layered pauldrons were held securely in place by a series of straps running underneath. Similar bracers were wrapped tightly around his forearms, though there was no indication of how they were held in place. Large greaves covered his high black boots all the way up to his knees. The now-familiar form of the «Anneal Blade» hung at an angle from the left hip of his belt, a small pouch tied just behind it. The white shield on his back had black trim and the image of a sword in the same color.

He really looked like a proper knight now. It occurred to me that despite having an unreasonably large amount of Col, neither Keiko or I had ever brought up the subject of upgrading our wardrobe. We were still wearing the same «Cloth Shirts» and «Old Skirts» from a month ago. Even the bunch random players in the stands were wearing more respectable outfits by now. While they had nothing fancy like Diabel's flashy armor, none of their clothes had holes and patches in them. Hell, if clothing was damaged by regular wear and not just by attacks, there wouldn't be anything left of our basic clothes by now.

Though I didn't want to voice the thought, I knew why we didn't upgrade our equipment. With our beautiful faces, we attracted so much attention already. If it was this bad already, while wearing little more than rags, how many times over would those stares multiply if we actually had attractive clothing on? I hardly even wanted to think of it. After I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the thought, I blinked up at the stands again.

While I watched, two more people entered the area, seating themselves all the way in the back, halfway around the semicircle from each other. One was a boy with black hair. When I saw the sword sheathed on his back, I recalled that that was the boy who had helped us open the dungeon that day nearly a month ago.

He no longer had the leather coat from back then. In fact, it looked as if he had removed most of his armor, the cheap looking leather chest plate, which didn't even cover most of his chest, being the only exception. Like everyone else, his clothes were normal looking, almost like modern day clothes, except for the slightly thick, woolen feeling they gave off.

However, the other figure was wearing a big, dark red cloak that completely obscured their appearance. The only thing I could make out were the similarly colored red boots. A big, dark cloak. Maybe that would help. If we hid our appearances that way, surely it would stop some of the stares. I would have to bring it up with Keiko later.

*Pan pan* The sound of clapping brought my attention back to Diabel. He still held his hands together for a moment before calling out in a loud, clear voice.

"O—K! Now then, it's five minutes late, but let's start! Everyone, a bit more to the front... there, come three steps closer!" He waited while nearly the whole crowd slid closer. The only ones who didn't move were the two solitary players in the back row. Again, he shouted in a friendly voice, introducing himself the same way he had when we met him back in «Harunka», saying his name, and that his profession is «Knight». He was immediately answered with playful jeers from the crowd about how SAO didn't have a class system.

Suddenly, the atmosphere became much heavier. Now in a quieter voice, Diabel spoke to the silent crowd.

"Well then, about the reason I gathered you top players who are active on the very front lines, I don't think I need to say it..." He paused for a moment. My mind split into two thoughts at once. First, he was saying that these were all of the strongest players. They were the ones who had been going into the dungeon and returning each day. The other thought that struck me was the only reason he could have to gather such players.

"Today, my party found the stairs going to the top most floor of that tower. That is, tomorrow —or, at the latest, the day after tomorrow— we will reach it: the first floor's... boss room!" As he said the final words, the entire crowd erupted with shouts. Shock ran across their faces. Some shot to their feet, others just looked stunned.

From the talk of a boss, paired with this being a gathering of the strongest players, I shifted down, huddling closer to the wall. Keiko pressed close at my side. No, this is still an Inner Area; there wouldn't be any wolves crashing down on us like last time, I told myself firmly. While the commotion still raged, and Diabel waited for it to calm down again, I turned to Argo and pulled about two hundred Col from my inventory, tossing it to her.

"Hey, Argo-san, do you know what happened back in that clearing outside «Horunka»? When those wolves attacked, what happened? I never found out afterward."

Argo ran her finger along the little sack of Col, then apparently deemed it enough for the information, because she opened her mouth to answer.

"Everyone there died. The wolves were only chased away when the Boss died."

"Ah..." I wasn't sure why I asked, but it somehow felt foreboding. Last time something like this happened, everyone had died. Surely, that wouldn't happen in the coming boss fight, right? Besides, if these were all the strongest players, if they all died in the fight, there would be no one left to clear the game.

This coming fight would decide whether we even had a chance escaping this world or not.

By the time I came to this conclusion, everyone had quieted and Diabel began to speak again. "One month. Coming this far took one month... Even so, we have to set an example. Kill the boss, and reach the 2nd floor! We have to show that this death game can be cleared to everyone waiting at the «Starting City». That is the obligation of us top players here! Isn't that right, everyone!" He seemed to be going through the same thoughts I had just had a moment ago. This time, his speech was followed by outright applause.

However— A new voice called out. With a kind of high-pitched nasally sound, it wasn't very loud, to the point where I don't know how it could even be heard above the crowd. It called out to wait a minute, in a tone that stopped the applause right in the middle. A man in the middle of the assembly stood and hopped down to the base of the seating. He approached Diabel and when asked to give his name, answered "Kibaou."

This man, Kibaou, wore a scale-mail shirt, a kind of armor I hadn't seen very often. Besides that, he only had some rugged leather gloves and calf length boots for armor. Then, I noticed that he sheathed his sword on his back, the same way the black-haired boy did. Of course, the most notable thing about him was his creep hair. It was like he'd buzzed it down everywhere but a few places, causing certain pieces of his hair to stick out in spikes. The image reminded me of the spiked maces some players carried.

All of a sudden, he demanded apologies. He didn't say who it was that should apologize, for what reason, and to whom. Of course, that left everyone with rather clueless expressions for a few moments, until Diabel asked him to clarify in a careful voice. He immediately explained that he was talking about the Beta Testers apologizing to the two thousand people who had died already.

When asked why, he launched into a long rant that he had either practiced for a really long time, or he was just listing out all of the complaints he had stored against the Beta Testers. Through his many accusations, it became clear that his essential reason was: 'because they knew more than everyone else at the beginning.' I had to sigh.

So he was one of those guys. The 'Beta Tester Haters,' as I called them. I really could not understand where they were coming from. They were all so angry at the Beta Testers for... what exactly? The only reason they had ever really given was along the lines of 'you know more about this game than me.' Seriously, just because someone knows more than you, how does that give you the right to hate them? When Keiko and I first came here, we didn't even know what the game was about! _Everyone_ knew more than us. Did I go around hating everyone else because they were a gamer and already knew what Experience was at the beginning?

Really, underneath it all, they were just angry and grabbed at the only thing they could think of so they could take their anger out on someone else. People like him made me sick.

As I was shaking my head at this pitiful man, a new voice came from the audience. It was a deep, heavy sounding voice. That imposing voice wound up belonging to an even more imposing man. I guessed that he was about 185 centimeters tall(6 feet). His skin was dark, really dark. The appearance of his shaved head and angular face immediately said that he wasn't Japanese. A foreigner?

He slowly stepped forward, introducing himself as Agil. The name immediately appeared below the hp bar floating near him, since I was staring so hard. He had a few layers of light leather and iron armor on over his sleeveless white and gray shirt. He was facing toward me, so I couldn't tell what kind of weapon he had on his back, though it had a huge, shiny silver handle that gave it the look of a large mace or axe.

After clarifying that Kibaou was blaming the Beta Testers for all the deaths up until now, due to lack of information, Agil reached behind his back and brought out a little black book. Then—

"Hey, let's get going." This came from Argo.

"Huh? But, wait, uh," Keiko and I stammered together. Argo just grabbed our wrists and started pulling us along behind her, through the doorway we had been standing under.

"I don't really want to be around while people talk about my stuff," she complained. "Besides, now that its reached this point, they're going to split up into parties and map out the twentieth dungeon floor. Then they'll challenge the boss to a number of scouting fights over the next few days before moving in with the full raid group to kill it." From my ample practice, I quickly drew the lines to connect her quick explanation to what I understood, to figure out what she was talking about. As soon as I'd done that, I thought, wow, she really knows her stuff, doesn't she?

And then, "Wait, but that'll be too late!" Keiko called out in panic.

"Huh?" this time, both Argo and I were confused.

"It's the mass-suicide!" Keiko explained with wide eyes.

Author's Note: Argh, another bit that I didn't get quite right in the last chapter. I've changed where I said the third floor in the dungeon to the nineteenth floor, since I had the number of floors in the dungeon wrong.


	36. Chapter 36

**Ultimatum ****Chapter 36**

"Huh?" both Argo and I said at the same time.

"You know, all those rumors that there will be a mass suicide on the fourth? The one-month anniversary of SAO?" Suddenly, it clicked. I'd thought about it earlier that morning, wondering just how many would go through with it.

"What about it?" Argo asked, drawing my focus back to the conversation.

"If we don't clear the floor before the fourth, a lot of people will surely kill themselves." Keiko gave the obvious answer to her question. Argo's face darkened, her eyebrows drawing together under her low hood.

"Well, what can we do about that? They still have to clear the floor and there will be many days of scouting fights..." she spoke in a low voice.

After a minute, "Then... what about information?" Keiko asked earnestly. "You know everything, Argo-san, don't you have information about the boss?"

"W,why would I?" Argo stammered. "No one has even seen the boss yet!" That stopped Keiko for a moment, but I continued on. Somehow, I knew where the conversation was going, and knew how to get what we wanted. I guess I'd learned a bit about Argo over this last month.

"But we have seen the Boss before..." I paused for a beat, then, "in the beta test." The reaction was immediate. Argo's head lowered slightly, a look passing over her eyes. I couldn't really read it, it was so quick. It was something like sorrow, guilt, or other such feelings. While I couldn't tell what it meant, I knew I'd struck a nerve.

Keiko picked up from where I'd left off, going on with "If it's Argo-san, you definitely know all about the Boss already."

A number of expressions crossed her mousy face, traveling at random between guilt, anger, pride, and a number of others that were too complicated to even figure out. However, just as I'd foreseen, Argo couldn't betray her pride as an information broker. She squeezed her eyes shut, dropped her head and put her hand out.

"Fifty-thousand Col." Her small voice demanded. Without hesitation, Keiko pulled the money from our inventory and plopped the sizable bag in Argo's hand. Still without looking, Argo recited the information quickly, as if she had it all memorized. Actually, she probably did have it all memorized.

"Name: «Illfang the Kobold Lord». Main weapon: Bone Axe and a buckler. Alternate weapon, talwar. Two meters tall..." she went on and on, delving into all the fine details of the boss's attack and defense patterns, health, damage, everything. We listened intently. Although I didn't have any particular reason to know about it myself, I engraved all the details I could in my memory as she spoke.

When Argo stopped, standing there quietly in the dark, I waited a minute before speaking again. "Could you put that information in another guide book?" I asked earnestly. "If you do that, they can skip the days of scouting battles, and we might get the boss beaten in time."

"But, all the information is from the beta test..." Argo said quietly.

"So? From what I've heard, hardly anything has been changed since then!" Keiko insisted.

"But, if I publish the information, people might think I'm a beta tester myself."

"You're Argo, you know everything, it would take you no time at all to gather information from the beta testers." Though I knew it was just an excuse to give people as to how she had gotten such info, I actually did believe it myself.

"But, then, this 'mass-suicide'. We don't even know if it will happen. We don't know how many people will actually go through with such a thing."

"That's the problem," Keiko countered. "We don't know how many thousands are so lost in their own despair, that they would actually end their own lives. Even one death is unacceptable if we have a chance to stop it."

"Well, even if you say that, it's not like me to give information away for free!" she shot back, though she took a step backward. I could feel that we had the upper hand here. Together, Keiko and I pressed forward.

"We already payed for the information. Fifty-thousand Col is a good enough payment for everyone, isn't it?" big smiles spread across our faces as we leaned in, forcing Argo to back up more, panic now mixing into her expression.

"B,but it's information from the beta test. It might not even be right. It would be bad for my reputation if the info turned out to be false," she tried to come back, but we kept pressing forward.

"You're Argo the «Rat». You have to be right." The dark hall which branched off from the town center made a ninety-degree turn to the right, causing the retreating Argo to back into a wall. Diffuse light came in through a doorway a little distance down the hall, showing the presence of an exit to the town outside. We pushed close to Argo, each planting an arm on the wall behind her.

"So, what do you say?" we said together with big, devilish grins on our faces.

Then, footsteps.

As one, our three heads turned to the side to find the black-haired boy standing just a few meters down the hall, the light illuminating his figure in the doorway. He had his menu open, watching it as he walked, tipping me off to the fact that he was using it to navigate, probably using friend-tracking to find Argo. We all froze in place as he looked up from the menu, his eyes locking on the scene in front of him.

His blank expression didn't change at all. He stared at us for a few moments, a slight blush showing on his cheeks. Then, he turned around and walked back out.

This isn't what it looks like!

I wanted to shout that, but my whole body still felt frozen. We stayed that way for a few moments longer, until Argo used the opportunity to slip under my arm and dash halfway to the door.

"Fine, I'll write up the information." Despite her serious words, the cheeks under her strangely drawn whiskers were glowing red, almost bright enough to light up the dark corridor.

"H,however, I have two conditions before I publish it!" she continued shouting, though we were still standing right in front of her. "One! They have to clear the last floor and get to the boss room tomorrow, or there will be no point to releasing such dangerous information anyway. And two! You need to give me some kind of indication that my information is correct!" She crossed her arms with a loud "hmph!" and turned away.

"But, how do we get that kind of information!?" I demanded.

"You'll have to figure it out. Of course, one thing does come to mind..." she turned halfway back, the orange light of the setting sun reflecting off the side of her face we could see. Her lips drew up into a smirk, causing the whiskers on his cheek to twitch upward. Leaving that half-finished thought hanging in the air, she swept out the door and was gone.

I gulped. I didn't need Argo to finish that last thought, because I already knew exactly where it lead.

"Keiko, let's go. We're going shopping."


	37. Chapter 37

**Preparation**** Chapter 37**

Author's Note: Slow release this time, because I was working on something. (You'll know when you see it.)

With the sun now in full view in the gap up to the second floor, the whole sky had bright orange and a strong red glow covered the many people who had returned from the day's hunting. Some would still be out, trying to hunt longer to gain a level advantage on the others. I actually sort of understood that now. It seemed to be a gamer thing, that they were always competitive. Even if this had become a Death Game and we were all just trying to survive, this was still a _game_ world. That meant that if they tried hard enough, they could be the best. While I didn't feel this way myself, since I wasn't really a gamer, nor very competitive, I could see how this had a draw.

Even in the real world, everyone tried their hardest to get the best job, fighting for promotions so they could make it as high as they could. In here, 'being the best' was much more simple. Be the highest level. Ok, maybe not quite that simple. Like that black-haired boy— it was also part skill as well. I sighed, even trying to distract myself with idle thought, I could still feel the stares of every player within sight boring into me. It was actually kind of amazing, they managed to carry on with whatever they were doing— talking, eating, whatever. It didn't matter what. But, they somehow managed to crane their head around to stare at Keiko and I in the process.

We hurried to the equipment store, since the highest quality store was on the side of town opposite of the inn where we were staying, all the way in the southwest corner. (I had found out a while back that they actually _did_ use the cardinal directions the same way as the real world) The area was packed, since that was where most of the high grade shops were in this town. We picked our way through the crowd and made it to the store. I pulled the door open and we slipped into the shop together.

Unlike the red evening, the interior of the store was very gray, with slight shades of brown. Probably to make the clothing stand out better, I guess. Glancing around, there wasn't anyone else inside at the moment. We approached the NPC shopkeeper and asked to see their stock. From there, we got to discussing our equipment. We leaned drastically toward AGI, so we would need light armor. No full-plate for us. I mentioned that we still had three skill points to spend from leveling up that morning, in case the armor was just a bit too heavy.

Keiko operated the shop menu to filter out the heavier armors and narrow her search to just the things light enough for us to use. Of course, there was mostly leather armor listed. Leather hardly weighed anything in here, but the protection was about the same. Iron armor and some special pieces of bronze armor I'd seen were the second lightest, but still too heavy for someone using the type of build we had. That just left us with leather. So, no defense for us, it seemed.

Keiko messed with the filters again this time switching the shop to sort from most expensive to cheapest. While it wasn't fool-proof, it made sense that the most expensive equipment would be the strongest. We were picking through the best stuff they had when I noticed the nighttime bells tolling, telling all players within a few kilometers that it was now 6:30 pm.

It was a reminder to come back to the city before full night fell, since it was much more dangerous to hunt at night. This wasn't Japan, where you could always see lights on the horizon, no matter which direction you looked; in Aincrad, nights were dark. The diffuse lighting from the moon was the only light at that time. Lucky, the light wasn't entirely blocked by the rest of the floating castle above us, although I couldn't see how such a thing was possible. Probably so we could at least see a few meters in front of us at night, I guess.

Well, it wasn't actually a thought, but a memory. I'd been thinking about the dark nights a week or two ago. That memory flitted across my conscious for an instant before disappearing again.

In the next moment, a few more items appeared at the top of the list. Naturally, they really stood out stood out from the rest. They even would have without having appeared in a strange way. That was because they were several times more expensive than anything else the shop sold. They were called «Reinforced Leather», and when we pulled up the stats, they were quite high compared to the other equipment, about halfway between leather and iron armor. So, that was the obvious decision.

Keiko hit 『Buy』 on the shop menu, but nothing happened. There wasn't even the sound of bells like what accompanied everything else. We looked at each other for a moment with confused looks. Suddenly, the shop door, now on our left, swung open, banging against the outside of the building with a loud sound. Our heads snapped to the sound to find a little boy, panting. From the looks of him, he wasn't a player. I focused on him to bring up his cursor and confirmed it. The NPC behind the counter who seemed more like furniture than a person suddenly sprung to life, along with a big golden question mark which floated above her head.

"Moco! What's wrong?"

"It's Ferin, she started forging some swords, but forgot that she doesn't have the leather she needed from you," the little boy explained quickly, "she can't stop in the middle or the swords will be ruined, but she needs the leather right now."

"Oh my, how could I get it there in time?" At that moment, a ping went off in my head. I'd done a number of quests, so I had gotten the hang of 'things Quest NPCs say that you're supposed to answer.' Of course, as usual, Keiko beat me to it.

"We can help," she said simply. I pulled open my quest window to watch for it to update.

"Oh, would you?" the NPC responded immediately. "The forge is at the far north end of town. It's the last building before the outer wall and has smoke coming from the chimney, you can't miss it." She turned around, picking up a stack of big leather... things. They were definitely made of leather, but pressed very flat, so they gave the impression of ceramics, of all things. She staggered over and heaved them up onto the counter, breathing heavily after several seconds. "Take these to the forge. Hurry, she'll be done forging in just a few minutes.

As soon as she finished that last sentence, my quest window updated, and my eyes immediately locked onto the numbers in the middle. It was a timed quest, and we had three minutes. "We gotta go fast." I said urgently, turning the window for Keiko to see. Her eyes widened at the sight. It took close to ten minutes to get through the town when it was crowded like this. This was probably the worst time of day to attempt such a thing—

But that was the point. If my guess was right, we wouldn't be able to buy that equipment unless we completed this quest. It seemed logical enough, though I had never heard of such a thing. Why else would there be items much better than everything else in the same category, which we couldn't actually buy. And in a few moments after appearing—_right after the nighttime bell_— a quest starts. That had to be what this was about, a quest to get strong armor. However, that still left us with one problem.

How the hell do we actually get there in time?! Keiko grabbed the pile of leather in the middle to split it in half, but it didn't budge when she pushed on it. She pushed harder, her jaw clenching with the effort, and the top half slid off. I held my arms out to catch them, intending to carry them like a stack of textbooks. They came down flat on my forearms and crushed my arms against the counter.

"Owowowowowo," I gasped. They were incredibly heavy. How was I supposed to carry this across town? I couldn't even lift half of it! "Keiko, let's use the rest of our points," I advised. "She nodded, quickly using hers. With my arms pinned, I managed to twist my fingers correctly to open my menu and she added the points for me. That did the trick. I immediately felt the crushing weight on my arms lessen, and I wrapped my hands around the bottom to keep my grip. I leaned back and picked up the short stack, only about ten centimeters tall. It was still heavy, but I could totally carry it like this. Getting to the other side of town in the two and a half minutes we had left though...

As we moved to the door, the little boy nowhere to be seen anymore, I asked Keiko "any ideas on how we do this?"

Her response was immediate. "Just like Argo, rooftops all the way." I nodded seriously.

As soon as we left the shop, a guy who was leaning against the side of a nearby building said to us. "Oh, you're doing 'that' quest?" Then, he snickered. "Good luck, I'm surprised you can even lift those things, little girls." My eye twitched.

"Thank you for just volunteering as my stepping stool." I shot back. I only got a 'huh?' back before I began to move. With a great effort, I bent my knees, then kicked against the ground as hard as I could. I had some practice in this now, and used the «Link» to get Keiko in position to follow, letting her pick up the follow-through as she always did. With no verbal communication whatsoever, we jumped up, planting our feet again on his shoulders one after the other, then jumping again, just skimming over the ledge onto the roof behind him. Angry shouts shot up from below, followed by the laughter of the ever-present crowd who had been watching.

We quickly regained our feet. We probably had about two minutes left, though I had my hands full and couldn't check. We kicked off hard and ran as fast as we could along the roofs. Luckily, this town was designed similarly to the «Starting City», with a circular shape, centered around the colosseum-like town center from earlier. That meant that from we were, in the southwest corner, we just had to run along the rooftops counter-clockwise around the town to reach the Northern section. There were a number of gaps between the buildings with player-lined roads below, but we already had our speed up, and vaulted over each one.

Compared to our usual speed, this wasn't much. We were probably only moving about half of our normal sprinting speed, but it was still many times faster than walking through the crowd. Quickly, though I'm not sure just how quickly, we reached the Northern area. From up here, I could see the house, just as the NPC had described. We made our way to the road heading directly North, the road we used every day when we went out to hunt. In fact, the blacksmith's forge was right next to the gate, the first house off to the right side. Although, I had no time to muse about how we walked past there all the time, (I'd actually never even noticed that it was a blacksmith's shop before) because we were coming up on the road.

Together, we swung right, running right to the edge of the building before making a giant leap. Air rushed past for a few seconds as we descended toward the hard, stone street below. At the edges of my vision, could see the stunned faces of all the boys and men below, a small part of me realizing that in this position they probably all had a perfect view up my skirt. I shook the thought off. I wanted that new armor.

As the ground moved to meet me, my mind spun through my next action. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to make use my momentum to roll out of the jump, since I was holding the stack of leather. I would have to land flat on my feet, a thought that made me glad this was an Inner Area. My feet hit the smooth brick surface with a loud crash and pain surged up from the bottom of my feet, all the way up my legs and back, across my shoulders, and all the way back down again. I could grit my teeth as the wave of pain passed.

"Come on, get moving!" I growled to myself, pushing up with enough force to unfreeze Keiko's legs as well. With gasps of surprise still ringing out behind us, we shot out of the small plaza where the two roads met, taking the larger one due North as fast as we could. Between the main Northern road being a good deal wider than the inner streets of the town and most of the players being elsewhere at this time of day, the road was much less crowded than everywhere else.

"Lucky!" I said, just loud enough for Keiko to hear on my left. We shot down the road, hooked slightly to the right, and burst into the blacksmith's as fast as we possibly could.

"We brought the leather!" we shouted together.

There was no response from the woman sitting next to the forge. She tapped a metal bench with a *ta ta* sound. We set down the leather where she tapped and I stood back to get a good look at this strange girl. As I'd halfheartedly expected, she was the blacksmith we were looking for. As the boy had said, the name under her health bar read 『Ferin』. She pulled a sword out from the big furnace and laid it on the anvil next to her. Then, she grabbed one of the pieces of leather off the top of the pile with one hand and our jaws dropped. I knew that things here ran off numbers, so you couldn't judge people by their looks, but really? Who was the brilliant designer that thought 'how about we make this blacksmith look like she couldn't even pick up one of the swords she makes, and make her super strong?' Because that's basically what it looked like.

This NPC, Ferin, was short, skinny, and frail looking. I just had to sigh at that. Then, out of curiosity, I asked, "What do you have for sale?" She looked up at me for a moment, but unlike every other shop NPC I'd seen, didn't say anything. Instead, she just nodded.

The shop window appeared and I immediately set it to only show one-handed swords. There were a few, and I brought up their stats to compare with my current «Wolf-Tooth Sword +7». The stats on the shop weapons were really good, but just, just lower than my current sword by a tiny margin.

"Wow, these weapons are on par with the «Anneal Blade» everyone wants," I noted to Keiko. Supposedly it was strong enough to use for a number of floors above here, but wouldn't there still be better swords on those floors? Well, I'd have to wait and see. While the blacksmith worked, Keiko and I looked at each other for a minute. Did we finish the quest? We brought up our quest windows and they said to return to the other shop. So, we had finished?

We both said thanks to the smith and she nodded again. We left the shop, and again, she said nothing where the other NPCs would say 'thanks for your business,' or something like that. "Weird NPC," Keiko noted as we walked down the road, heading back to the armor shop.

After taking a while to pass through the crowds again, we returned to the still-empty shop and the shopkeeper thanked us for delivering the leather. She went on to explain that as thanks, she would let us buy a new kind of armor she had come up with, Reinforced Leather. "Haha, just as I expected," I muttered to Keiko as the NPC spoke. She finished and the quest window said we had completed the quest, noting that we received a decent amount of exp for it.

We bought the expensive armor. The full price of the two sets came out at sixty-five thousand Col— probably enough to make most players faint. Oh well, we'd probably be using it for a while anyway. It was just a one-time price. Besides, selling materials like we were brought in a little more than that in a week.

With the new armor sitting in our inventory, Keiko turned to me and after a little hesitation, asked, "Now... how about new clothes?" with a small twinkle of hope in her eyes. I immediately wanted to say 'no,' but stopped myself. While I wasn't overly concerned with my appearance, (attractiveness-wise) I would look really weird in such nice armor with just my starter clothes on.

That's to say, I would look like I didn't know what I was doing. Now that, _that_ was important to me. After fighting here for a month, I finally knew what I was doing, and I didn't want to give anyone the impression otherwise. How to say it... kind of like, I didn't want anyone to look down on me anymore. I wasn't the newbie player who had started with no clue what was going on anymore.

Maybe the way I was feeling could be coming from the same place that had me carrying so many swords right now. A strong sword in my hand was one thing. Then, what about sturdy armor and clothing which made me look competent? Why else did businessmen in the real world all wear nice suits? It gave both their clients and themselves that they knew what they were doing.

As I had noticed with many other things in this world, it was the same with this aspect as well; the concept was the same, only the form had changed. Just like how 'work' had changed from 'get a job', to 'fight monsters.'

In one sense, this was just like the real world. The longer I stayed here, the more the thought really sunk in. Even if this was all inside a game world stored on a server in some dark room, this was still its own reality. When I thought about it, what was the point in fighting to get out of here?

Well, even now, the answer was obvious. I could simply continue to live in this reality, in this world «Aincrad», instead of the other world «Earth». However, the difference was that I didn't really _want_ to live here. I preferred Earth to Aincrad, that's all there was to it. While there was certainly more excitement in this world, I only had my sister with me. After this long, I really wanted to see my parents again. However, that was just a small reason. At my very core, I knew without a doubt, I wanted Keiko to return to the real world again.

For that reason alone, I would cut down everything that stood in my path until I broke all the way through this world and made it back home. Dying to get Keiko home wouldn't cut it anymore. I was determined to make it there with her, because I wouldn't be able to see it through otherwise.

As my roundabout reasoning was about finished laying itself out in my mind, Keiko coughed to get my attention. It seemed that I had been staring off, deep in thought for a little too long. It actually took me a moment to figure out _what_ conclusion I had come to from the thoughts that all jumbled up on top of each other now that they were no longer neatly ordered at the forefront of my mind.

I nodded, and after a very brief discussion on color, we realized we didn't know if the color of our clothes would affect the bonus buff we got (for being identically equipped) from our «Stat Boost» passive skill. So, to quickly test it, we bought two cheap shirts, black and white, and swapped them around, checking repeatedly to figure out that wearing different colors definitely did cancel the effect.

So, we wouldn't even be able to wear different colors if we wanted to keep the buff.

Then, something else occurred to me. After telling her my plan, I bought another black shirt while Keiko went outside and grabbed the first person she saw. She hauled in some scared looking man, probably in his twenties.

"Hi, I'm Rei," I stated clearly.

"I'm Rai," Keiko said as well. What we wanted to figure out was if wearing different clothes would also affect the «Outside of System» skill, which I think Argo had called, what was it... «System Misidentification». That was it. She'd come up with that about two weeks ago when she payed us a nice sum of five thousand Col to recount our whole story since we started playing SAO. More specifically, when we had told her about Heathcliff's advice to wear the same outfits, to help with the boss fight. Funny, his advice had useful in many more ways than the simple reason he had given...

Anyway, we wanted to test if that was affected the same way, though we were already pretty sure how the outcome would be.

"Umm, hi, I'm Kojiro..." he answered hesitantly.

"So, tell me, under my hp bar, can you see my name?" Having given it to him, he would be able to see it right now, as long as wearing different colored shirts negated the effect of the strange «OOS». He focused on me, then nodded slowly. "Ok, black now." Standing behind him, out of his field of view, Keiko switched from the white shirt to the black one, to match mine.

The effect was immediate, the man, Kojiro, blinked a few times, then, "It's gone now."

"Ooh, wow, he doesn't even have to see both of us, it works even if he only sees just one of us, we only need to be dressed the same," I noted. Keiko quickly pushed the flustered boy out of the shop and when she returned, we checked to make sure weapons were also a factor in the special buff. As it turned out, as long as it was the same weapon, it was fine. They could be reinforced differently without canceling our buff. However, we did both need to have the same sword equipped.

Having thoroughly tested to make sure before we moved on, we got to discussing colors and styles for the new clothes we would buy. Of course, Keiko insisted that we continue to wear skirts, and I didn't fight her on it because really, I'd been wearing a skirt for a full month now, I was used to it. However, I used it as an opportunity to refuse stockings. Of course, colors were obvious. Since the leather armor was various shades of brown, we would be getting green. Nothing else really matched quite right with brown. However, I didn't want to be all green and brown, it would look strange. So, Keiko suggested we change the skirts to blue. I shrugged and said 'sure' to that.

Having gone through the main stuff, we moved on to accessories. The main point here was pouches for our throwing needles. After thinking for a little while, we decided to buy five pouches for the needles, the kind which would leave them exposed so we could grab them quickly. We also bought quite a few of an item called «Straps». While they were mostly for looks, the did provide a marginal boost to the durability of armor they were used with. However, that wasn't our point in buying them. They also enabled us to fit and adjust our armor and various accessories.(like our needle pouches) From there, we bought two belts each. One for our sword, one for another needle pouch. After a bit more thought, we bought a three more pouches each, for holding potions and whatnot for quick access.

Finally, I asked Keiko if she wanted to get dark cloaks, so we could avoid the stares of the crowds, since they were really getting to me. She thought about it, but answered that she didn't want to hide under a cloak just after buying brand new clothes.

Having finished our shopping, the total bill added up to thirty-four thousand five hundred Col. Just for clothing? Probably would have given Klein and his crew a heart attacks had they been here. Finally done spending our hard-earned Col, we had just a little less than one hundred forty thousand remaining.

With a nod, we both moved into the changing rooms. This town was big enough that the shop actually had rooms. As I had found out, when changing clothes, even if changing directly from piece to another, it would take a few moments to switch, during which time you would only be wearing your underwear.

So, we each went into separate rooms. Somehow, we were still not comfortable seeing each other naked,(half-naked anyway) even after sleeping in the same cramped bed at the inn for a month. We'd actually turn off the lights before getting undressed to avoid it. Seriously.

Anyway, I pulled open my menu and hit 『Remove All Equipment』then 『Remove All Clothes』, leaving me standing there in nothing but a set of white bra and panties.(As far as I'd seen, there weren't any stores that sold different underwear yet. But who knows? We still had ninety-nine floors to go) I switched back over to the equipment menu and started putting on the new clothes on after another. Shirt, skirt, knee-high boots... After the clothing came the armor: a breastplate, pauldrons, forearm guards, like before. This time however, I also had armor to cover the top of my arm above the elbow and on my knees. Finally, there were the greaves which automatically embedded themselves in my boots.

I strapped on the two belts, crossing over one another to stagger the placement of the regular pouches on the back of the belts, then hung my sword on my right hip, a needle pouch on the other. I ran a strap between my breastplate and pauldrons to link the two, the same way I'd seen Diabel do. I did the same with my elbow guards and forearm guards, and knee guards and greaves. Using the small parts coming off of the breastplate, I attached a number of straps to hold two more needle pouches on my sides. The last two needle pouches were strapped on the outside of my thighs. Once I filled the pouches with twenty needles each, giving me enough that I didn't think I would run out unless I landed myself in another Boss fight.

Finally finished with my entire outfit, walked out of the changing room, back into the main area of the shop. There was a mirror against the wall, which I stared into deeply. (( tigersight dot deviantart dot com /art/Rei-Original-Character-Colored-331844583 )) The girl in the reflection was out of this world. She was like a warrior, elf, princess, or something else super fantasy-like. I just wanted to beat my head into the wall over how terrible it was that _I_ was the one stuck in this body. I frowned slightly at my reflection.

The breastplate was brown, made of hardened leather so that it held its rigid shape. It had shiny silver trim made of what I had to guess was steel around the neck and running along the sides, down under my arms and up my back. The leather wrapped all the way around, both over my shoulders and around the center of my back, holding it steadily in place. From the looks of it, it somehow made my stupidly large breasts look even bigger than they already were. Connected with a pair of thin strips of dark leather, (front and back) were my pauldrons, made much the same way. Again, hard, reinforced leather with a trim of bright steel running around the outer rim.

The elbow guards were more simple, forgoing the steel rim and using slightly softer leather, so it could bend slightly as I moved my arm. This piece had numerous straps holding it to my forearm guard, which I still wasn't sure how it actually stayed on. I guess they had skipped over that when designing armor, since it just appeared on my wrist as it was when I equipped it. The knee guards were even softer still, allowing me to bend any way without trouble. They probably wouldn't offer much protection from attacks, but would protect my knees from other sorts damage, like if I slid on my knees for whatever reason. Although, I don't think you can skin your knee in SAO...

Whatever that case, one strap ran behind my knee, securing the pad in place, while two more anchored it to my boots. They were just below knee height, coming right up to where the join separated. They were darker brown than the rest of my armor, with a red indent running up the front, the place where the inlaid greaves sat, forever waiting to take a hit.

Overall, my appearance was very good. I certainly looked better than before, and the sturdy armor, which could even be considered heavy for someone like me, gave off a very sturdy feeling.

*Whooooo* a small whistle drew my attention away from the mirror, to a man waving me over.

He said, hey come here," in a light tone. Seeing no reason not to, I took a few steps closer.

Unlike the many other players I had seen, this man was clearly older, probably mid-thirties. His greasy-looking hair was mostly black, a bit light though, as if it was starting to gray. However, he seemed rather ghost-like. His cheeks were hollow, and he had lines deeply drawn in his skin as if he wore a permanent scowl. Except, he wasn't scowling right now, he had a friendly expression as he continued speaking.

"Have you heard of a thing called, «Ethics Code Off»?

"No, what's that?" I asked immediately. There were still things I didn't know about? Seriously? I had just built up my confidence, seeing how competent I looked in my new gear, and now this?

"It's in the options menu," a jingle of bells ringing as I opened my menu and quickly switched to options. He continued speaking after a moment, my motions following along as he went.

"It's all the way at the bottom of the list, the last option." I tapped it, and it toggled off.

I stood there for a few moments, but nothing happened. What was an ethics code? I looked back to that man to explain, but he suddenly changed topics—

Wait, did he just use a little known, non-important option to start a conversation with me? I felt like smacking myself in the head for being so dull there. What was this again, getting 'picked up?' I'd never tried myself, since most of the girls in my class were either really smart, really pretty, or already had boyfriends. I figured I would at least listen to what he had to say before I told him I wasn't interested.

"So, do you need any help with anything? Maybe you need some new equipment?"

"No, I just bought a full set of armor and new clothes," I answered flatly.

He switched topics again. "Then, what about a new weapon? You can never get a weapon too strong, or maybe you would like me to help you reinforce yours?"

"I already have Seventeen «Wolf-Tooth Swords» at +7 reinforcement.

"I,is that so... and what kind of sword is that?"

"A super rare monster drop. The only other person with the same sword got it from me," in informed him. Did he actually not know who I was? Maybe it was the new outfit, or maybe he was just new around here, but it was kind of funny. He was trying to act like I was a poor little girl who needed free help from a stranger, while I was definitely far above him in terms of experience, equipment, and Col.

After a brief pause, he switched again, this time changing his approach entirely. "Ah, so you're pretty strong. Sounds like you have a few levels under your belt too."

More than you do, I thought.

"So, how about we get out of here, and, maybe get to know each other? If you want, we can go back to my room and get to know each other really well..." he waggled his eyebrows at that last part.

Hmm, what was that about? I thought for a second, before the answer kicked me in stomach. Did he really just imply what I thought he did? Was that even possible in this game? Suddenly, my thoughts took a ninety degree turn and rage welled up from deep inside me. This guy was really trying to seduce me! Right now! My hand, held up in front of my chest until now, balled into a tight fist.

"You..." I squeezed my fingers together, pouring all my outrage and anger into my small hand.

"You... You..." I couldn't think of any word to follow that, as I just repeated it louder and louder.

"You...!" Finally, my hand shot out. I was actually surprised that my fist _wasn't_ glowing with the lighting effect of a sword skill as it shot straight forward, straight toward the center of this man's forehead.

About a millimeter from colliding with his face, a flash of purple exploded between his skin and my hand, stopping my hand dead. The «Criminal Prevention Code» It stopped me from actually hitting him, but the force of my punch still transferred to the man. Of course, with my level so much higher than his, he was instantly thrown off his feet. My punch sent him flying through the air, and just happened to aim right to throw him right through the door and out into the street.

Even after the door swung closed again, I clenched my fist in front of me. What was wrong with that guy? He was obviously more than thirty years old, and no matter how you looked at it, I looked fourteen.(which was funny since that's actually how old I was) And since everyone(except us) looked like they did in real life, he would definitely know that I really was fourteen. What kind of man tries to seduce a just-barely teenage girl? Worse yet, after getting this new, more attractive clothing, the first man I met tried to seduce me? Really? As I stood there fuming, Keiko walked out of the other changing room, stopping and asking what was wrong.

"I'm getting a cloak. A big, dark cloak." I answered in a low voice.

Author's Note: Longest chapter so far. (exactly 6000 words as of 'exactly')

Anyway, here you have it. Hope you liked the picture(even though it kind of sucked) That's what delayed this chapter for so long. I literally worked on that day and night with minimal breaks so I could finish ASAP. Same thing for this chapter, I actually fell asleep at my desk a couple times while finishing it. Well, good night and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I'm not drawing another picture again in the foreseeable future, so there *shouldn't* be any more long stretches of nothing for some time. Hopefully.

Sorry, I ramble when I'm sleepy. All done.


	38. Chapter 38

**Why are we doing this again?**** Chapter 38**

When we finally left the shop, the moon was in the center of the sky(the sky we could see at least) Despite her earlier refusal of my cloak idea, she apparently cared more about matching me than looking good in her new clothes, because she bought a matching cloak and donned it before we set out. The effects were immediate and so, so very comforting. While everyone had bored into us with their stares before, now we may as well have been invisible. No one even spared a glance our way. Apart from that, the cloaks were totally practical. While not as high as the armor, they had rather good defensive stats and could be used to carry a number of other things, such as potions and ever more needles. Though not effective against all enemies, they would even serve to hide our movements somewhat. The only downside I could think of was that it might constrict my movement in a fight, though it was quite large and I couldn't be sure of it.

It was only 8:00pm, but we headed right back to the inn, meaning to get up very early tomorrow. After a simple meal of some hard bread and a little watery soup, we went up to bed. However, I couldn't manage to get to sleep. As I lie there, Keiko making small sleeping noises next to me, I tried to close my eyes, but to no avail. I wasn't all that sleepy, but then again, neither was Keiko. So why could she still sleep so soundly? I rolled over, trying to get more comfortable on the cloth mattress. When nothing else worked, I simply closed my eyes and waited. My consciousness didn't fade over time. I was awake. Drowsy, but definitely still awake, all night. Was it nerves maybe? Although, I didn't think I felt very nervous.

Whatever the case, I waited until the little 『Alarm』 window floating above me started to ring, and sat up, yawning. I tapped the button to turn the alarm off as Keiko slowly rose beside me.

"Onii-chan, what time is it?" she asked in a small voice.

"Five in... the morning," I answered, a yawn cutting through the middle of my sentence. I slid out of bed and stood slowly. I wasn't terribly tired, but I certainly didn't feel well rested after that night without any real sleep. "We have to get going early, today is going to be a long day," I explained. After putting all our clothing and equipment on again, (which thankfully stayed in the same place after you adjusted it the first time) we headed out into the sleepy streets of «Tolbana» Keiko's luck led us to the inn Diabel was staying at, and we waited in the common area, getting a breakfast remarkably similar to our dinner the night before. (Meaning it was exactly the same.)

We sat around until he walked down the stairs, immediately standing up to greet him. We quickly asked if we could join his group for clearing the top level of the dungeon.

Our plan went like this: As long as Keiko was in the group, we would find the boss room in no time. The one issue was me. Because I was there, we would definitely trigger all sorts of traps along the way. I'd heard that a lot of the traps released monsters to ambush players, while very few were actually killing-type traps like spike pits and such. I sighed, at least if we were in a big group, we could protect ourselves from most traps.

Of course, the monsters in the dungeon would be more difficult than anything in the field. For one, they were higher level, and boasted much more defense than the «Snarlys» that we routinely killed before they could fight back. Also, they were Kobolds, humanoid monsters. This meant they could use Sword Skills, a very dangerous thought. Getting hit by a sword skill would be much more dangerous than a regular attack. For that reason, we were going to have to be much more careful.

Diabel immediately agreed to allow us into his group, though we would have to go as two parties, since his party was already full. That was fine by us, since our plan would work as long as we were there. Diabel also mentioned that he had heard we were pretty strong. We both just smiled together and thanked him for the complement. We'd figured out a while ago that it was a bad idea to tell people our level, since, according to Argo, the average level of the players (excluding the ones hunkered down in the «Starting City») was just level 5. We were with the strongest of those, the «Clearers», but even then, the strongest I'd seen were just barely level 8. Of course, we had learned the hard way a few weeks back that it made them _really_ angry to hear that we were already twice their level.

Despite the crazy leveling-spree in those first few days, Diabel had apparently lost the level advantage over the last month. I wasn't really sure how that could be though. If the best of the best were level 8, then he really should be higher than them right now. Even if he was always with a full party and splitting all the exp six ways. The main reason for my curiosity was about those first days. If He had killed at least four wolves, probably more... Well, there were the first two wolves, then we each fought two, and then there were a couple more that he killed with Klein. Coupled with killing the boss as well... If my math was right, that meant he should have gained almost one hundred thousand experience in those first few days.

According to the way leveling worked, it would only take one hundred twelve thousand to reach level 8. So, he really should have gained more than that in the last month. Actually, I gained more than that hunting «Snarlys» for an hour. He really should have passed level 8 by now, so what was wrong? Diabel didn't seem like the kind of guy who would get lazy and lay around for the last month...

Those thoughts rattled around in my head as we headed down into the valley, leading to the dungeon, following a dozen paces behind the cluster of Diabel's party. The valley had only a few trees spread sparsely over the area, with tall grass rising everywhere but the wide dirt path in the middle, which led to the dungeon entrance. It offered a wide view, so running into hidden monsters wasn't a worry. But that didn't matter much now, as the monsters this far down the valley had rather long respawn times, so the area was still clear from the group that passed before us. Except, it was kind of surprising that we weren't the first to go through today. It was only 6:00am, a half hour since we met Diabel at the inn. He had quickly eaten and gathered his party, allowing us to set off in a mere ten minutes. Of course, we had equipped our cloaks to avoid the attention of his party and the increasingly busy streets before leaving. After Diabel's group had quickly dispatched the few monsters at the valley entrance, we had walked down this way. That left us twenty minutes into the valley, with another five or ten to go before we would finally reach the dungeon entrance.

I wasn't actually very worried about the lower levels of the dungeon. It was the traps that scared me. Since we would be traveling through mapped areas, all of the traps along the way would have been sprung already. Well, in theory anyway... I shook that thought out of my head quickly, before I could start imagining how every other square centimeter I stepped on would be rigged with a trap.

No, the only problem would be the top floor. Definitely. I clutched my fist in front of my chest as I walked. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Keiko glance at me. Her face under her hood held no expression, but I felt some kind of warmth, sort of fluttering like a candle. It struck me that she was laughing inside.

I glanced back. I knew she was listening to my internal dialogue there. Well, not my words, but at least following my feelings as I went through it. She grinned and I was surprised for a moment. Our link must have been getting stronger, or at least we were becoming more attuned to each other, because I could feel the shift between a light flutter somewhere in the back of my mind. It kind of shifted away from a off beat wavering feeling to a more straightforward, pure feeling.

When her wry grin softened into a smile, I realized that feeling indicated happiness. Huh, if we kept getting better at this, eventually we might be able to talk to each other. Something like that was still a long way off though. For now, I was just glad that we hadn't tripped each other while walking in a while.

Finally, we reached the entrance to the dungeon. We all stopped, Keiko and I still leaving a little distance between ourselves and the group. Since we weren't actually part of their party, we felt like outsiders, almost intruders. One or two of the men in his party wore expressions that said they felt the same way. The others just glanced at us with brief, curious looks. Obviously, the cloaks were doing their jobs of hiding our figures, because none of the looks were awed or anything.

They all double-checked their potions and weapons. It seemed like a good idea for us to do as well, since each one of us had more weapons on us than their entire group combined. I went through each of my needle pouches, making sure each held twenty needles, then checking all of the many hidden weapon pockets in my cloak to ensure they were fully stocked as well. I was carrying upward of three hundred throwing needles on my person at the moment, as was Keiko. Along with potions and our swords- with numerous backups prepared, I think we were ready for anything.

First, Diabel stepped into the dungeon, followed by his party. Keiko moved through the entrance a pace or two ahead of me. Then, I finally set my foot on the cool stone floor and stepped inside.

Nothing happened.

Yes! I clenched my fist in triumph. Keiko moved and my body jerked forward on its own, allowing me to pick up mid-stride to catch up with her. "Not nice," I whispered playfully to my little sister.

"If we don't keep up, they'll leave us behind." Unlike her serious words, her tone was almost as silly as mine. We picked up the pace and again settled into place a few meters behind. The pace was much slower than before, more careful. We wound through the dark hallways, large torches with blazing orange flames spaced evenly on either wall providing a lot less light than they should have. After a short time, we came to a staircase and moved up to the next floor.

We continued traveling upward, not meeting any monsters along the way. For one, dungeon mobs had really long respawn times, sometimes even a week or more. This was presumably to allow players to delve further in without having to fight through the same hoards of monsters every time they came back.

Also, if there had been any monsters along the way, they had already been killed off by the party preceding us, just like the ones in the valley before.

When we reached the fifteenth floor, I checked my map and noticed that it was a good deal less well mapped out than all the floors below. Probably because players had been moving around on the floor for a much shorter time than the lower floors.

"Careful, this area isn't explored completely, I'm going to start triggering traps," I warned Keiko. She nodded, her cloak shifting in a way that let me know she was readying her weapons. We dropped our pace some more, first to move with more care, and second to put more distance between us and Diabel's group. I didn't want to catch any of them in any of the traps I set off.

Sure enough, about halfway to the next floor, I stepped down and a shudder went through the floor beneath me. "Trap!" I barked, though in a low voice. We both stopped, dropping into defensive stances at the same time as manic screaming reverberated through the corridor. I glimpsed Diabel's group turning around toward the sound before my eyes shot up toward the source.

I immediately discerned a large humanoid monster above me. It was growing larger in my field of vision, falling toward me from a hole in the ceiling that had probably just opened a moment ago. It was the kind of trap to catch you off-guard. The screaming, the falling in from above and all that was surely to disorient the player and cut them down in a single stroke, before they could rally their defenses.

Not designed for people who expected a trap to go off at any moment. Before the monster, 『Kobold Berserker』, as its name read when its cursor appeared, had even made it halfway to us, twenty throwing needles embedded themselves in its chest. Despite being a heavy attacker with probably very little defense, the higher level monster wouldn't go down from just that. It brought its giant two-handed blade down with a glowing yellow effect, straight toward my forehead. As I'd heard, the Kobolds could use Sword Skills. Since it was a large two-handed sword, I wasn't really sure what Sword Skill it was, but it didn't matter.

The large blade met both of our swords, swinging up together in an «Uppercut» attack. It's blade was deflected with a massive lightshow of sparks firing off in all directions, briefly lighting the dark area, before they vanished and the Kobold went reeling backward, landing heavily and stumbling away, toward Diabel's group.

After drawing our swords back for a moment, they began glowing again, this time with a dull red glow. After just two steps forward, the system assist kicked in and our bodies shot forward, using the charge-type Sword Skill «Hate Spike». Though it was a charge skill, it was very low level, and didn't deal much damage. The skill's usefulness came from it allowing one being able to cover a large distance to the target, and hesitate for a moment before performing an uppercut attack, throwing off the timing of the attack.

As expected, the Kobold clumsily swung its sword to parry the attacks which didn't arrive until a moment afterward, digging into its flanks. Because «Hate Spike» was so low level, it hardly had any delay time, allowing us to step forward again as the Kobold continued to stumble backward. With two quick flashes, we brought our swords into position for a trusty «Slant». Though it was one of the most basic attacks, it dealt a good deal of damage, since we had gotten pretty good at boosting the skill. However, I still didn't even feel compareable to the way that black-haired boy used his Sword Skills. And that was a month ago! What was his trick? I'd have to ask him the next time I saw him.

Our swords flashed out from the middle, Purple lines slanting upward to create a V in the air before the monster exploded into shards of light.

Without the monster obstructing our view down the corridor, we now saw Diabel's party just a meter or two away, staring at us with awestruck looks. Calls of 'wow' and 'that was amazing' were murmured throughout, even from the couple that had looked opposed to us tagging along earlier. The only response I could muster to their complements was a quick nod. Then, I sheathed my sword, as did Keiko. Apparently, they still couldn't see us, as their amazement died down a few minutes after the fight ended. We reached the next staircase and moved onto floor sixteen without incident.

On the next floor up, I triggered another trap the moment I stepped off the stairs. This time, a loud *piin* rang up from the spot I stepped, a single small tile on the floor glowing bright blue. We stopped dead for a moment, before it was followed by a strange whooshing sound, as if it came from all around us. Then, all at once, I could hear the sound all pulling together to one point, right on top of me. We both dove down the hall as fast as we could, a fiery explosion going off right where I was standing a moment ago. As I landed and rolled back to my feet, three more *piin* sounds accompanied three more glowing tiles.

"Uwaaa!" We shouted, together, turning and running as fast as we could while all sorts of blades and crushing walls and spike pits popped out of every conceivable surface behind us. There were a ton of monsters as well, but I set off so many traps that they fell into them and died in droves. All the while, it seemed like every place I stepped sprung a new trap.

We careened down hallways at random, coming across dungeon mobs and totally ignoring them as they tried to chase us, only to fall into the traps among all the others. I don't know how long it took, but we eventually made it to the stairs, where there were no traps, and collapsed, panting heavily. We had long since lost sight of Diabel's party, but they would probably be on the next floor by now, so we quickly ascended the stairs until we came to the next level. There, we stood hesitantly, knowing that it really wasn't a good idea to go into yet another death rigged area. And just think, if we managed to survive the next one, there would be another three floors to go.

This was exactly what I had been worried about, but for some reason, I walked into it anyway. With this thought in mind, I turned to Keiko and asked in a dismal voice—

"Why are we doing this again?"


	39. Chapter 39

**Traps Traps and More Traps ****Chapter 39**

Author's Note: Hmm, I don't know if 'bomb zone hell' can even cover it... :p

After flying through floor seventeen, we collapsed again on the stairs to the next one. Most of the traps on that floor had been fire traps, so the back hem of our cloaks were looking a bit toasty, but our Agility and Sprint barely allowed us to run fast enough to blow past all the traps. We moved up the spiral staircase, probably a good distance above the regular ground level on the floor outside by now. Actually, now that I thought about it, we were probably most of the way to the next floor. Since they were only one hundred meters apart, if each floor was just four meters(13 feet) tall, that meant that the final staircase to the next floor would actually be a short climb, just twenty meters or so. This came as a surprise, since, looking from the outside, I'd always imagined having to climb a staircase all the way up the inside of this huge tower to reach the next floor.

After going the two revolutions around the spiral staircase to the eighteenth floor, we came to another deceptively empty corridor, the same dark stone as the others. Although, the surface of the floor here was different. Instead of smooth tile, it now was composed of slightly rough looking stone, with a few lines like cracks here and there. Looking at it made me wonder about two different things.

First, would the traps be different than before? The other floors were made of tiles, so each tile triggered another trap. What would the trigger look like on such a bare, undivided floor? Would the traps just be on random points, or the large sections created by the various cracks? I was hoping for the latter, because the former would mean I could set of upward of twelve traps with a single step— not a pleasant thought.

My other thought was less worrying. After my previous thoughts on how close together all the floors were, it occurred to me that the floor here was the ceiling of the floor below. As far as I knew, the floors were not «Immortal Objects», so in theory, they could be destroyed. While I wouldn't even imagine being strong enough to break through at my current level, maybe later? Or maybe someone bigger, stronger than me, with a heavier weapon? I wondered briefly if that may be useful later. Possibly for making an emergency escape. I tucked the idea away, so I could pull it up again later if I needed it.

Finally, we stepped onto the next floor. We carefully stepped a few paces forward, so far so good. Maybe this floor wasn't trapped like the rest?

Nope—

Another trap triggered and dove immediately, but it was a monster trap, so only monsters were created behind us. The next seven traps I triggered when I landed were also all monster traps.

"Only monsters!" I gasped. That wasn't good. In fact, it was way more dangerous than anything up to now. We'd been able to rely on the death traps to kill the monster traps' monsters until now. Of course, there was already no hope of fighting head on here, since each trap appeared to summon about ten monsters, meaning we were already getting close to a hundred mobs in this hallway.

"Ruuunnn!" I screamed, and we did just that. We made a beeline straight for the next floor as I tried to scratch out some sort of battle plan when so hopelessly outnumbered. The most important thing in a fight like this was to absolutely avoid being surrounded. If we got surrounded, we would die instantly. Even as we ran, more and more monster traps activated, flooding the area behind us with such a swarm, it didn't even look like monsters anymore, it was more like one giant mass of death bearing down on us from behind.

"Needles!" I called. We hopped, spinning in midair and throwing a surge of needles down the hall behind us. When our feet struck the ground again and we began to slide backward, we spun and kept running. As we continued to move on the most direct route to the next floor, we repeated this process again and again, always keeping out of range of the mob behind.

I'd heard players call this sort of thing «Training». Not like to train yourself, but to create a train of monsters following you. And as far as I'd heard, it was one of the worst things you could do, because if you crossed paths with another hapless player, they would surely be overran by the monsters following you and die. It was called «MPK», «Monster Player Killing», or killing other players using monsters. Because really, that's what you were doing, even if you didn't mean to. The mobs were chasing you, so it was your fault.

Luckily, there was no one else here, since we were the first party through here... or not. No, definitely not. There had been at least one party before us. Although, they were probably on the twentieth floor already. The absence of regular dungeon mobs was more or less evidence of that.

Of course not—

As we spun back from another barrage of throwing needles, we immediately spotted Diabel's group ahead, engaged with a few monsters.

"DIABEL-SAN'S PARTY! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" we both screamed out as loud as we possibly could. Even in the middle of a battle, our insane screams made them turn immediately to face in our direction. Their reaction was immediate. The turned and fled for all they were worth. The monsters they were fighting previously began to give chase, but we quickly moved into aggro range from behind, and they turned back to fight us.

"Out of the way!" I shouted, drawing my sword and bringing it across my front to a position near my waist, not far from the sheathe I had just drawn it from. Even though it wasn't quite in position for a «Slant», I felt the hum of power move through my blade, telling me that I had successfully positioned myself for a Sword Skill. A Sword Skill I didn't know. I glanced sideways to see Keiko's blade also emanating brilliant red glow. As long as she had triggered the same skill, it would be safe to use.

The position was the same as a «Slant», so instead of just letting the system assist take over, I tensed my arm, waiting for the moment to strike. The cursor for the monsters came up in my vision, four of the strongest monsters in this dungeon, the 『Kobold Sentinel』. It held a longsword in one hand and a shield in the other. The four of them were all around half health. A moment before I was about to unleash my attack, I kicked off hard and felt my body shoot forward faster than should have been possible for me. This told me that this Sword Skill was a charge-type. So, I hesitated, just a moment, then I felt it and lashed out with all my might, my sword flashing up in a motion nearly identical to a «Slant». I dazzling array of lights shot all throughout the dark corridor as my sword met the first Kobold's sturdy wooden shield.

In an instant, my blade cut straight through the shield and the monster behind it. Two shattering sounds exploded, right in front of me, and off to my right where Keiko had cut straight through the other front-most 『Kobold Sentinel』. However, our Sword Skills weren't over yet. As I continued to glide forward, my attack actually having propelled me slightly off the ground, my blade continued to arc upward, meeting the second monster's chest when I was halfway through my swing. This too exploded into shards of light on impact. What a truly fearsome Sword Skill. Although, if the power was so incredible, what would the delay be like?

As my feet planted, I felt the delay kick in as I was unable to move a muscle. Except, I was moving. It must have been a part of the skill, that I immediately re-sheathed my sword upon finishing the attack. The moment the hilt of my blade clicked against the sheath, the delay ended, just a quarter of a second or so. I kicked against the floor hard to begin my next dash, having lost all my momentum at the end of that attack. That new attack was absolutely scary, and it even had a short delay.

However, it forced me to sheathe my sword again at the end. I wondered why, considering that it was probably a one-hit-kill type of attack. Because, if the attack didn't kill your target, it would take another quarter of a second or more to draw your sword again, taking the seemingly short delay skill up to nearly a full second to recover. While one second usually didn't seem like a very long time, everything in Sword Art Online went so fast that it felt like an eternity.

One second was a long time to wait when it only took a tenth of that to be cut down where you stood. Like right now, if I were to freeze in place for just one second, the hoard of monsters behind would almost surely catch me. We were quickly closing in on Diabel's party, since we ran so much faster. The stairs loomed just a little ways up ahead. And all at once, I had an idea. The stairs were much more narrow than the hall, so if we could force a fight in the stairway, we would both have the high ground, and force the huge number of monsters into a small space, where they wouldn't be able to fight effectively. On the other hand, the stairs were large enough for two players to walk shoulder to shoulder, so we would at least be able to «Switch».

We made it to Diabel's group at the base of the stairs and shouted, "We fight here!" Keiko and I moved a couple stairs up, out of range of any monsters with longer ranged weapons, and turned drawing our swords to hold them off while Diabel's party hesitated in joining. As expected, the monsters all crammed together, perhaps even better than I imagined, because they were different monster types, which wouldn't be made to fight effectively together, and swung their weapons all at once, none of them managing to even come near us as all their weapons rebounded off one another.

Keiko and I leaned forward, swinging out with a couple attacks of our own before we were forced to back up a step by the monsters surging forward again. Numerous sharp weapons waved around in front of me, but most either embedded themselves in the backs and sides of other monsters, or bounced off weapons and walls ineffectively. Again, we cut into the mass of monsters, some dying to our strikes.

More monsters pushed forward to fill in the gaps, but were no more helpful than their predecessors, as we continued to slowly back up the stairs, one by one, and cut more monsters down. After going back and forth a few rounds with the mass of enemies, Diabel's group was finally at our backs, and we waited until the monsters began to attack, when we called, "«Switch»!" and hopped backward, allowing another two to squeeze past and take our place.

The moments this took, with no one there to take the attacks, left the monsters open to a counterattack. However, the two who took our place seemed unable to fight side by side as we did. They both started using different Sword Skills, which caused them to collide in mid-swing and they had to «Switch» again quickly, before the next assault caught them out of position.

The next two did no better, and the next «Switch» had only one player moving in to take their place. Apparently, while the stairway was wide enough for us to «Switch», it wasn't good enough for two player so fight side by side. We were probably able to do so, despite the cramped space, because of our fighting style. When we fought, we both attacked together, perfectly in unison. In fact, I had never messed up an attack and had my sword collide with Keiko's before. It had never really occurred to me before that this was special, or even rare, or difficult in any way. It was just natural for us.

So, as we fought, we slowly backed up, one step at a time, while continuously «Switching» to dodge the monster's attacks and unleash our own counters. Despite our seamless combat strategy, the swarm of monsters just never seemed to end. After one «Switch», I quickly tried to figure just how many monsters there were in the mob. If I had hit one trap every meter, and each trap released ten mobs, then there would be close to five hundred monsters...

Five hundred monsters!?

The battle raged on and on, all the way up the spiral staircase and out onto into the halls of the nineteenth floor. This was a major problem. Diabel's party couldn't run as fast as us, so we couldn't just run for our lives and let the traps take care of the monsters. Because of this, our only hope was that everyone would be able to dodge the traps while fighting the monster hoard. Of course, this wasn't much of a plan, but we didn't have any other options at this point.

"Explosion trap!" I called, and everyone dove sideways. The massive ball of fire took out a section of the monster hoard, but I triggered another monster trap that filled in the gap in the Kobolds with some more kind of tall, robotic looking monsters with axes.

"Dart trap!" We all hit the floor as numerous darts fired overhead, briefly stunning the pointy, rock-like looking monster it hit at the front of the pack just before it attacked. Diabel lashed out with a quick slash to finish it off.

"Spike trap!" We all dodged and weaved as spikes flew from the walls at random, though one caught a member of the party in the arm for light damage.

"Mob trap!" More Kobolds came from the front, and a segment of the group moved to fight them back as we continued to retreat through the halls.

"Rock trap!" We all dove again as giant boulders fell from the ceiling and crashed into the surrounding monsters. Luckily, it took out some of the Kobolds blocking the way in front.

"Berserker trap!" Another berserker flew down from the ceiling, but a number of throwing needles shot into its throat and it died before it even touched the ground.

"Lots of traps!" I shouted when I felt many traps go off at once. We all turned and ran as large golems erupted from segments of the walls and jets of fire spewed through the area. We dove past a corner at an intersecting hall, as another large boulder rolled past in an attempt to crush us. More berserkers fell from the ceiling in the next hall and were embedded on a few long spears this time.

"Musical trap!" by this point, the trap names were just starting to get comical. We all covered our ears and retreated while music which would paralyze us if we listened played in a small area.

"Smoke trap!" We all ducked through the smoke that billowed up around us and I had to quickly sidestep a spike pit trap I triggered in the smoke.

"Acid trap!" shields went up as we ran to block the acid rain seeming to appear out of nothingness overhead. Multiple spikes shot up around us as we all danced around until we cleared the acid field by this point, we were all scorched, most of our equipment was in tatters, but we had largely avoided taking damage, while mitigating any inadvertent minor hits with potions. During the tiny breaks in the traps, we turned and fought back the monster hoard that was probably still growing behind us from all the various mob traps I was still setting off.

"Explosion trap!" we dove again, before all turning and dashing for the next staircase, now just a little further ahead. Keiko and I stood our ground for a moment, to give them time while they retreated, before running away ourselves.

Squeezed back inside another tight stairway, we reverted to the original battle plan and fought fiercely, but were still forced to retreat one step at a time. Everyone fired off their most powerful sword skills, and the spear users shot their weapons out into the enemies again and again and again. Even with the exhausted looks on their faces, everyone's battle fervor seemed to only increase the longer this drew on. More and more often, Keiko and I found ourselves at the front, slashing away with everything we had, more explosions of light particles following every attack.

We came to the top of the next staircase and were again bombarded on all sides with a multitude of deadly traps. We danced all over the place to avoid massive spikes and spurts of freezing air which would root us to the spot instantly if we were to get hit. We were on the twentieth floor now, so there were numerous regular mobs as well, which Keiko and we took upon ourselves to rush forward, cutting them down as fast as we could with the strongest blows we could muster. I was getting to the point where I hardly even had to think about my next move, my body was nearly moving its own between one Sword Skill and the next, with dodges and traps and shouting warnings and everything else filtering up, around, and in between.

I was throwing more needles backward at the hoard when my hand finally left my cloak without any more needles. "All out," Keiko and I said to each other at the same time. I cut down another 『Kobold Sentinel』 in front before triggering another fire trap, which we all ran past, letting it burn some more of the mobs for us. A wall crushing trap triggered and we all ducked past before it hit. This delay gave us the opportunity to finish off the next group of 『Snake Warriors』, humanoid monsters with a snake heads, before the walls opened again and the swarm picked up behind us again.

We shot around a blind corner and nearly charged right into another group 『Feral Screamers』, tall and lanky monsters with hooks for hands that used close range screaming attacks to disorient players. We used the moment of surprise to slip around them before they could attack, passing them by as they took up position chasing us at the front of the monster swarm.

More traps fired from all sides and we kept pressing further into completely unknown territory. All hell rained down around us, but we managed to avoid anything life-threatening while chipping away at the monsters behind. All the crazy traps definitely helped too. We moved through the dungeon at random, always moving, always fighting, for longer than I would have imagined a human being capable of.

We all stumbled backward again, rolling past multiple geysers of fire, ice, and poisonous gas that shot from the walls, and lashed out with another set of Sword Skills. By now, all of my limbs felt like they were made of lead, and surely the only thing keeping me upright was the massive amount of adrenaline coursing through my brain. The hospital nurses were probably freaking out in the real world.

Although, it seemed like we didn't have much more to go. I could actually see through the swarm of monsters now, so I knew there weren't that many left. Even with the mob traps always increasing their ranks, our blades and all the other death traps were thinning them faster.

Finally, there were just a few monsters left, a number of 『Kobold Warriors』 and 『Goblin Miners』. However, the enemies suddenly halted their pursuit. We all hesitated for a moment. Surely, we had finally set off a trap so dangerous, the mobs were actually programmed to hold back. Just as we were sure something terrible was about to happen, the monsters disappeared in a small puff of particles.

"They just... despawned?" someone's voice came from behind me. My eyes shot all over the place, but I couldn't find any signs of danger. There were a number of small stones placed in the hall that I hadn't noticed before, though I didn't know what they were for. When I turned around, I froze in place. The sight was astonishing. Right in front of us—

The Boss Room door.

Immediately afterward, the 『Result』 window appeared in front of everyone present, granting everyone the rewards for that whole battle we just fought through. My eyes immediately appraised the now-familiar screen.

『Exp 40000』

『Col 18750』

『Items 0』

Then, a few things happened one after another. First, the words 『Level Up』shot up in the air above everyone's heads except ours. In the next moment, everything seemed to freeze. Even as I tried to move my hands, I seemed to move in small bursts, the air around us filled with a myriad of items, all seeming to explode outward from Keiko. It was all the trash mats. There were so many, the entire game was slowing down around us.

After the few moments it took the items to appear and the game to compensate for the sudden load, things went back to normal. It was weird though, this world was so realistic the rest of the time, actually having it slow down and get choppy was a big reminder that this world wasn't actually real, but all going on in a game...

Despite the thoughts going through my mind, as the trash mats fell down all over us like rain, loud shouts of triumph shot up all around.

"We made it!"

"We found the Boss!"

"We actually survived that!"

"Hahahaha!"

"Let's go kick that Boss off his throne!"

In the midst of their initial shouts, Keiko and I looked at each other with wry, half-smiles. Somehow, despite everything we had to go through, we actually managed to get here. Then, as if the adrenaline in our bodies turned off all at once, everyone's legs gave out. Swords slipped from hands and clattered to the ground all around.

I felt my whole body crumple and hit the floor like a rag-doll, completely unable to move. My hood fell around my head, so I couldn't see around me at all. I didn't pass out, so I just let myself lie there for a while.

I needed some rest after that one.


	40. Chapter 40

**Second Condition**** Chapter 40**

Author's Note: OMG Episode 15 is out.(Yes, I realized I'm a day late) Downloading right now! ^_^

After lying on the floor for a while, I finally felt like I'd recovered enough to stand up again. I would probably have been in better shape if I'd gotten some sleep last night, but it at least I was alive. I had even managed to avoid taking any damage during all of that. I exhaled a long breath before slowly pushing myself back up from the ground. Everyone else was still down, out cold from the looks of it. Keiko was sitting next to me, looking like she was in a little better condition.

I looked around, noticing that strange rocks on the floor from before. Looking closer now, I could see that they had glowing white-blue runes inscribed on the surface, with an arched line traveling between them. I'd heard about these from somewhere before. A... safe area? It was an area in dungeons were monsters wouldn't go, so they were safe to rest in when you got tired. Funny how it was right outside the Boss Room. I wanted to ask Argo if the safe area would keep out a Boss, but you couldn't send messages while in a dungeon. Although, that probably wouldn't matter since, supposedly, a Boss wouldn't even leave the Boss Room.

So, I thought for a minute. Then, I opened my dungeon map and checked the «Completion» in the corner. It was already at sixty percent. Our insane rampage had cleared more than half of the floor already. According to the clock now situated above my map, it was 11:43 am. So, considering that I'd probably been resting for an hour, we had been fighting like that for over two hours. Whoo, it's amazing what a person is capable of when they're trying to survive, I thought slowly, still a little stunned.

If we could clear more than half of the dungeon with just eight people, surely the other forty or fifty people who were coming today would be able to take care of the rest. That, as well as having found the Boss Room already cleared Argo's first condition for distributing her information. The only thing left was...

I slowly got to my feet, extending a hand to Keiko, who pulled herself up as well. "Just one more thing to do..." I said. She nodded. We would have to go in now, before any of Diabel's party woke up, or they would surely try to stop us, wanting to save the scouting battles until tomorrow of the day after. So, we both took deep breaths and readied ourselves for what came next.

"Huh?" We both turned on our heels as a startled gasp came from behind, hands on our weapons as our cloaks flared around us. However, it was just another player. I relaxed immediately. Although, this player looked rather familiar... they wore a long red cloak...

The one from the «First Floor Boss Strategy Meeting»! It was that person who had given me the idea of getting a big cloak to begin with. But there was more than that... "You're... you..." It was coming back to me.

"You're the one who taught me how to re-equip my clothes," I said as I lowered my hood. All the way back when we had first started playing and Keiko had hit the button to take off my clothes, the person who had taught me how to put them back was a girl in a dark red cloak. This was definitely the same person.

"O,oh? You still remember that?" Came her small voice. Even under her cloak, I could see her cheeks turning red. "A,anyway! What are you doing here? And why are all those people collapsed?" In a lower voice, probably just thinking out loud, she said, "they aren't dead, they wouldn't be here anymore if they were. I don't think they're paralyzed either though..."

A smirk spread across my face as I opened my menu and switched over to the dungeon map. "Would you believe me if I said we just went on a massive rampage and cleared half of this floor by ourselves?"

"No."

"Then here's the map data to prove it." With the map already open, I tapped a finger on the cursor over her head and a few options appeared, spread horizontally across my view: 『Trade』, 『Party Invite』, and 『Duel』, with 『Add Friend』 on its own line below. I tapped trade and flicked the map data into the trade window, hitting the accept button immediately. She quickly accepted as well and opened her own menu. Though I couldn't see what was displayed, I could already tell what she was pressing based on her hand movements. She opened the dungeon map and stared closely at it for a minute with her mouth hanging open slightly.

She closed the menu and stated in a sort of defiant tone, "I was wondering why I couldn't find any monsters in certain areas."

"Well, if you want to help us out, could you give the data to anyone else you come across so we can definitely clear the floor today?" I nodded to her as she stood, looking a bit confused, or maybe overwhelmed. "Now, before these guys wake up, we have to go and check out the Boss." We turned to go, but she suddenly replied from behind.

"W,wait. Don't go in alone. I,it's dangerous," she stuttered hastily.

"Don't worry, we'll be fine, we just want to check it out a bit," I waved off her concern. As long as we kept our distance, we could gather enough info to please Argo and get back out. Then we could get her to publish the information that might stop the mass suicide. Even if we only saved one life, that would make one more person a potential survivor of this death game.

"Well, if it can't be helped, I'll go with you..." The girl said in a low voice, her tone saying, 'I don't want to, but I have to.'

"Mmm, sure," I replied after a moment. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to bring someone else, since she might get hurt. But, we were going into a stupidly dangerous situation again and wouldn't be able to stop her from joining us, so I had no choice but to accept. We stepped up to the large doorway and took a minute to recheck our equipment, which mostly meant refilling all our needles pouches for Keiko and I. All together, we pushed the double doors open.

The inside of the room was huge and entirely black. We hesitated at the threshold for a few seconds before advancing inside. The moment our feet touched the floor on the other side of the doorway, torches on either side sprung to life, bringing a small amount of light into the room. They were quickly followed by another pair just a fraction of a meter further into the room. In quick succession, the torches lit to illuminate the large room. The sight wasn't a reassuring one. The walls and floor were all cracked stone, with numerous skulls carved out in every surface. The torches finally stopped lighting, about halfway into the spacious room, leaving the deeper half in shadow.

All the way at the other end I could see a huge figure sitting in a throne much too large for a human. We slowly moved forward, one step after another, drawing closer to the throne and its shadowing occupant, the figure suddenly high into the air. We all drew our weapons and jumped back as the giant monster came down in front of us. The floor shook from the massive impact and we all stumbled backward.

It was huge, a full two meters (6.5 feet) tall and held an enormous axe made of bone in its right hand, with a (relatively)small wooden buckler in its left. I couldn't confirm that the weapon hanging across the back of its waist was as Argo said though, since I didn't actually know what a Talwar looked like. Finally, its name appeared above its head.『Illfang the Kobold Lord』. Four bars of health at its side. I noted everything I saw as the monster stepped forward, raising its huge axe high over its head. While it would certainly be an incredible attack, wasn't it a bit too obvious?

We all jumped out of the way as 『Illfang』 stood there for a few seconds with its axe raised high. Finally, it dropped like a guillotine, crashing into the large open area on the floor. Again, the floor quaked from its mighty attack. Without warning, it turned its blade my way and struck out with another attack, similar to a «Slant», from where its weapon had ended the previous attack. I jumped into the air quickly, letting the massive axe head pass below me.

Really, despite its massively powerful attacks, it was so slow that it didn't seem like it would be much of a challenge. I brought my sword over to the low position that had activated that incredibly powerful Sword Skill earlier, but nothing happened this time. I didn't bother trying to shift my position, since I knew I was doing it right. If I couldn't use that skill now, I'd just use other attacks. While I preferred single strike attacks, I had unlocked a couple two-hit attacks since starting.

Since this Boss seemed so weak, maybe we would be able to kill it right here and end this floor without even having to worry about getting Argo to publish the information for the raid group. Keiko moved at my side, and we both unleashed a «Horizontal Arc» into the giant's chest. It was a two hit skill which basically linked two «Horizontals» together. While I was good at boosting the first slash, the attack reversed into the second slash so suddenly that I still hadn't gotten the hang of it. Past the Boss, I spotted three forms jumping down from the walls. As 『Illfang』struck out with a wide, sweeping blow, we ducked around behind it.

I looked over at the approaching figures, their cursors now reading 『Ruin Kobold Sentinal』. I took note of the name, just a minor alteration on the monsters roaming the rest of the dungeon. They carried halberds though, with no shield and had iron armor covering most of their bodies. I activated a «Horizontal» and swung back, burying my sword in the Boss again.

This time when it turned to attack, it brought its sword up and we hopped sideways, but the move was a feint. It brought the sword around its side with a cleaving horizontal slash and we were forced to retreat out of range. While the mysterious girl engaged 『Illfang』, we turned back to fight the 『Ruin Kobold Sentinels』which were right on top of us. There were three, with two targeting me and the other targeting Keiko. Still off balance from the last second dodge, I brought my sword up to defend, but when I parried, I lost my balance and the second Kobold moved in under my guard. My left hand darted out, throwing three needles into the monster's hand and knocking its attack off target.

The blade slipped past my shoulder, nicking my pauldron before just skimming along my right arm. The sword dropped from my hand as pain shot up my arm like fire. I dropped to a knee, holding my arm, but Keiko's voice cut through the pain. "Onii-" she started, but missed a parry because she was looking at me, and shouted in pain.

"Keiko!" I screamed. My hand closed around the handle of my sword on the floor. I ignored the raging heat in my arm and chest as my feet kicked against the ground activating «Sprint» from a dead stop. I shot across the floor in an instant, grabbing Keiko as she started to retreat. "We got what we came for, let's get out of here!" I shouted over at the girl who was still holding off the Boss. With that, we dashed out of the room so fast, none of the monsters had a chance to react.

We sunk to the floor in the safe area, the Boss Room going dark again and the doors slowly swinging closed. Diabel's party was still out cold, so we sat for a minute to catch our breath. What in the world was that pain? The hit had only taken a sliver out of my hp, only about fifty damage. So why had it felt like my arm was about to fall off? I couldn't even grip my sword because of it...

Without warning, the cloaked girl stood back up and walked off. Since we had accomplished our goal, I didn't say anything as she rounded a corner and was gone. We had Argo's information, now we just had to get out of here again. As long as we stuck to explored areas, that wouldn't be a problem.

I'd set off every single trap on the way in. However, before we could get up to leave, Diabel lifted his head. On a whim, I decided to tell him about the boss. "Hey, Diabel-san. We just checked out the boss a bit," I said nonchalantly. "It's called 『Illfang the Kobold Lord』. It uses a bone axe and a buckler. When the fight starts, three 『Ruin Kobold Sentinels』 spawn as well. He nodded with a small 'thanks.'

"Well, sorry to be abrupt, but we have to go now. So, please excuse us." Diabel nodded again before we turned and set off down the corridor. Both Keiko and I kept an eye on our maps to make sure we stayed on the explored path as we went. Neither of us wanted to go into any dangerous situations until we figured out the crippling pain that any hit would cause. Last I'd heard, there shouldn't be _any_ pain in SAO. The worst that should be possible is mild discomfort. Such pain was extremely dangerous. After taking a single hit, we wouldn't be able to fight properly, if at all, because of it.

We picked up the pace, and soon wound up moving at a full sprint again as we quickly flew back out of the dungeon, passing a few parties with surprised looks on the way. As soon as we cleared the dungeon gate, I told Argo to meet us back at the town square in ten minutes. While it was nearly a half-hour walk to the base of the valley, our speed would get us back with time to spare. After a short moment, I received a reply of just a few words.

『Got it.』

Author's note: I fixed a couple mistakes from past chapters, like where Argo said the Boss used a scimitar. Strangely, that was actually in the translation in one place, even though it had an axe when they fought it in both the novel and anime. Also, I fixed the tags on all the mob names in the last chapter, from «»s to『』s.

Episode 15 was awesome! ^_^


	41. Chapter 41

**Trading Info**** Chapter 41**

It was around midday, not even 11:00 am yet, when we arrived back at the wide gates of «Tolbana». While our cloaks hadn't fared very well in all that madness earlier, they were still enough to conceal us. Of course, that was completely unnecessary at a time like this. The streets were almost entirely empty, with everyone out hunting or clearing the final dungeon floor.

The ones who remained appeared to be working on various 'around town' type quests like the one we had done the day before. They were generally quests that required the player to carry something from one shop to another, or sometimes to a husband somewhere nearby out in the field or some such. They were usually pretty quick and obviously, safe. Of course, anyone who had come this far wasn't out so much for the safety as the quick exp gain. Generally, doing a lot of quests would help a player level up faster, considering that challenging tough monsters which would yield the highest experience was out of the question.

So, the players that were still here payed us no mind anyway as they rushed about to finish whatever tasks they had as fast as possible. Without any hesitation, we shot through the gates and down the street, which would lead us directly to the town center. It took less than a minute to run all the way to the edge of the Colosseum, at which point we leaped straight from the edge, pulled in our knees, and dropped down all twenty or so levels of seating. We hit the ground and rolled to mitigate the downward momentum, coming back to our feet in a rush.

Still, landing like that _did_ hurt some. There wasn't supposed to be any pain in SAO whatsoever. I'd never noticed the little pains here and there before. Only getting hit by that Halberd had made it apparent. Nothing else in the whole month since we showed up in «Tolbana».

Then again, neither Keiko or I could actually remember coming here, since we had had a strange spot of amnesia which seemed to engulf three days between being in «Harunka» and waking up at a small farm on the outskirts of «Tolbana». In the last fight before that lapse, the fight against the Wolf Boss, I had taken a pretty bad hit, and even slammed into a wall. However, it wasn't really painful, just uncomfortable. After that, we hadn't taken a single attack, even a glancing blow. Probably because we always fought those 『Snarlys』which never had an opportunity to fight back. Even when we had triggered all those traps, we had managed to avoid taking any hits. It wasn't until a blow actually connected that I felt pain strong enough to make me notice it, and realize it was out of place in this painless world.

That meant that some time in the past month, something had happened to make things hurt, instead of just feel uncomfortable. Since nothing immediately came to mind,(I imagined an event that suddenly re-enabled our perception of pain would) I figured it must have happened during that time of amnesia.

_Wack!_ I blinked a few times as my cheek stung suddenly. "Oi! Anyone in there?" Argo said in a loud voice, standing half a head taller than me.

"A,ah! Sorry, I was thinking about something..."

"Hehehe, so was I..." Keiko said in an embarrassed voice.

Argo sighed dramatically, placing a hand on her hip and getting right to the point. "Do you have the information?"

"Yeah, we have it," I responded quickly. I pulled up the dungeon map, tapped her cursor to open a trade, and sent her the data. "Sixty percent of the floor complete already. I figure the other forty people can handle the rest?" raising an eyebrow.

Argo thought for a few seconds. "Yeah, I guess so. If not, they don't stand a chance against the boss no matter what we do." My head dropped a little bit at that. Not a reassuring thought... "Ok, and what about the second part?"

"Ah. The Boss is named 『Illfang the Kobold Lord』 and uses a bone axe and a buckler. I'm not really sure what his secondary weapon is though, since I'm not sure what a Talwar is... But anyway, when the battle starts, three 『Ruin Kobold Sentinels』 appear.

Argo let a small grin cross her whiskered face. "Good work. It matches my information exactly, so I'll keep my end of the deal and publish the information by the time they start the next meeting tonight.

"Thanks." I stayed silent for a moment, but when Argo started to turn to leave, I held up my hand and said, "Wait." Despite my plea for her to stay, I wasn't sure how to word what I wanted to ask.

"What he's trying to say is that he wants to buy information," Keiko helped me out, throwing a knowing smile my way. At that, Argo's grin turned a little more sly and a strangely calculating look passed across her eyes.

"So, what do you want to know?" she said in a smooth, kind of creepy way.

"Well, we just realized today that we have a big problem."

"And what's this problem?" Argo asked quickly. It almost seemed like her mouth was watering as she stared at me intently. Of course, I knew Argo now, so that look meant I could use it to my advantage.

"Discount off what I'm buying?"

Her look immediately turned sour, and she pouted out a "Fine."

I grinned to myself at that, answering before she could change her mind. "For some unexplainable reason, we can feel pain." A look of outright shock crossed Argo's face for just an instant when she heard that, though it was quickly replaced with skepticism.

"And how do I know you're not just saying that for the discount?"

Even though I hadn't thought of her asking that, my answer came immediately. "Because the information I want to buy has to do with the _why_ behind feeling pain. If I didn't feel it, I wouldn't need to know."

Argo was smart enough to follow that train of logic easily, and nodded to show it. "So, what's the question here?"

"Do you remember when we told you our 'story so far?'" I was talking about the time a few weeks back when Argo had paid us a sizable amount of money for our entire story since diving into SAO. She nodded and I went on. "Remember we told you about how we couldn't remember anything between being in «Harunka» and coming to «Tolbana»? I'm sure whatever caused this happened during that time." I stopped for a moment so she could think about it and recall the time I was talking about.

"What I'm asking is, do you have any information on _us_? It's been a while since then, so you have probably picked up all sorts of new things. Has there been anything in there about us during those few days of lost time?"

After I finished my request, Argo was silent for a long time. Her eyes closed in deep concentration and we waited. Surely, there was a massive amount of information for her to sort through to try and dig up any small detail related my request.

Finally, her eyes opened and she said, "Ok, since you're only asking about yourselves, and I'm giving you a price cut, and hell, because I want to know too, I'm only going to charge you one thousand Col.

—I hope all that thinking was to find the info, and not just figure the price, I thought sullenly while handing over the money.

"Ok, so the info is a bit iffy, but I overheard a few guys talking about you in a bar." My eyebrow went up at that one. Not exactly reputable info. And really, not a good lead in into whatever it was that was said... "They were talking about these two beautiful twins, you're the only ones I've met so far, so I imagine that was you." We both shrugged. "They were talking about how they got cheated out of a quest because you ran off with the quest NPC or something crazy like that. That's why their conversation caught my attention in the first place. When I approached them about it later, a bit of Col got them to tell me all about it."

"Basically, you guys went into the house with the NPC who gives the «Secret Medicine of the Forest» quest." Meeting our blank stares, she clarified. "Better known as the «Anneal Blade» quest, because that's the reward."

"W,wait, you mean the quest for the strongest sword available right now? We were there?" Keiko asked suddenly.

"Yeah, you went there, but you didn't take the quest. A series of... strange occurrences..."

At the same time, we both mumbled, "Sounds like us..."

"...ended with you two leaving with the Quest NPC, so none of them got a chance to complete the quest. They had to wait two days for the NPC to come back before they could take the quest. So obviously, they were very angry. They probably still are..."

"Huh..." Nothing she said was ringing any bells or anything. "Did it have a name? The NPC I mean?"

"Actually, it did... it was... Agatha." Still nothing. But, at least we had an idea of where to start our search. "Well, it's something. But, we've got other stuff to do now, so thanks for the info, Argo." I didn't have to remind her to get the info posted in time, she would definitely come through.

So, we turned and left quickly. For once, I actually managed to baffle Keiko, who had to probe my thoughts for a few minutes, refusing to just ask where we where going. I lead us out into the field, going to our normal grinding spot. There, I told Keiko that we were going to test how this strange pain worked. If there was nothing we could do to fix it, we would have to get used to it if we wanted to be able to fight. The way things were now, it was a miracle we hadn't been killed when something caught us off guard and the pain totally locked us down at the most crucial moment.

"Just think, what if we had been hit by even a single one of those traps? If one of those needles ones had just nicked us a bit? That unexpected pain would have gotten us killed. We have to fix that as soon as possible." Option one: find a solution to the weird problem. Option two: build a resistance to the pain. We had to start working on the second one now, in case the first plan didn't pan out.

"And that's why we're here," she finished my train of thought. "To let the 『Snarlys』 throw us a beating... I guess they deserve it considering how many of them we've killed..." she said the last part in a low voice.

"Yup, that's the plan. One of us will take hits while the other makes sure we don't get taken too low from it. We have plenty of potions for recovery, so that won't be a problem. Remember, 『Snarlys』 do pretty good damage, even if we are high level for this area." I took a deep breath, then said, "I'll go first I guess." She nodded quickly.

I drew my sword and ran over to one of the waist-height monsters, swinging a Sword Skill into it before it could respond. About three-quarters of its hp disappeared from the single attack, but I didn't finish it off. With it so low, Keiko could kill it in an instant if things became dangerous. From there, I backed off with the 『Snarly』 following, to make sure there were no more mobs close by. I took a deep breath. It lashed out with its claws and I parried in a way that would allow it to just glance my arm slightly.

For the second time today, tremendous pain surged through my body. All my muscles clenched tight and I couldn't even raise my sword to defend against the next attack. Sharp claws cut straight into my stomach and I lurched backward, landing flat on the ground, completely unable to move. As it raised its claws for another attack, three needles appeared in its neck and it shattered into particles of light.

After a minute, the blaring pain that felt like my whole midsection had been torn out lessened, until I finally managed to get my feet under myself and stand up again.

"Onii-chan, are you ok?" Keiko asked with a face entirely covered in worry.

I had to grin at that. "Perfectly fine." I indicated to the top-right of my vision, where both our health bars always were.(since we were always in a party) The two attacks had taken me from my maximum of 2822 hp _all the way down_ to 2566 hp. Basically, I was missing a sliver of health so small it wasn't even worth using a potion to heal. If those tiny attacks hurt that much, what would the boss attacks that knocked out ninety-five percent of my hp feel like? Heh, they'd probably just knock me unconscious instantly.

We went back and forth for a while, until we were both aching terribly. Overall, I'd say that this 'training' session was a complete failure. After the first hit, no matter how minor, we were rendered completely unable to defend ourselves from any following attacks. Although, after a while, we both managed to at least stay on our feet until the third attack landed, not that it was much of an accomplishment. In a real battle, we would still be dead.

We practically limped back to town, feeling broken and wounded terribly, even with our hp full. The one up-side was that since there was no real damage left by the attacks, the pain faded rather quickly. We were pretty much ok again by the time we made it back to town. Of course, it was only 2:00 pm and there was a really long time left before anything would happen, more than a few hours, and we didn't know what to do with ourselves in our free time. We'd never really had any free time before, we were always hunting, selling our loot, eating, or sleeping.

So, we wandered around the city for a little while and eventually wound up right back where we started. Of course, 'a little while' was more like twenty minutes. That left us very bored and very confused. We really didn't want to go back out to hunt, especially since we would immediately think about that awful experience earlier. Somehow, in our confused state, we wandered a short way from the gate, into the blacksmith's forge we had visited the day before on that delivery quest. The one with the weird blacksmith.

Inside, it was really hot. The NPC smith looked up at us with a strangely surprised expression for a moment, before losing interest and going back to whatever it was she was doing. I didn't really notice, because the heat was already making me sleepy. Keiko yawned loudly and sat down on the end of a countertop in the very corner of the forge, out of the way of anyone who may enter. I sat down with her, letting out a very long yawn of my own. This sudden tiredness, maybe it was an after-effect of that crazy battle earlier? Or from all the pain from endurance training?

I tried to tell myself it was a bad idea to fall asleep in such a place, but I couldn't keep my eyelids from drawing together anyway. Something about the hot forge was just so calming. Like a big, warm blanket on a freezing winter day.

And just like that, sitting on a counter in the corner of an NPC shop, we fell asleep.


	42. Chapter 42

**First Floor Boss Edition**** Chapter 42**

The first thing I was aware of was warmth, both the hot air around me and the warm body next to me. I opened my eyes slightly, but instead of a ceiling staring at me like usual, there was a person. In fact, they _were_ staring at me. I immediately cringed backward, coming almost fully awake. I blinked rapidly to clear the sleep from my eyes to appraise the situation, but when nothing jumped out to attack me, I relaxed slightly.

I looked around slowly this time. My hands, which had come up to protect myself, had met with fabric. A woolen blanket. It wasn't very soft, but it was the source of the heat I had noticed. I scanned the rest of the room slowly, just taking it all in at first. It finally reminded me of exactly what had led up to waking up here, and I shot to my feet, clutching the blanket. A spike of _Cold!_ Shot through the bond, and I turned to see Keiko, who had been woken by the absence of heat.

I turned back to see the large forge, now silent and cool. Apparently the smith had shut down the forge for some reason. That brought my mind back to the smith. The strange NPC—

Who was currently sitting in a chair and staring straight at me.

Wait, no. That wasn't right. She wasn't staring, her eyes were closed. I blinked a couple times. At first, I'd thought it was just a strange NPC, or a joke by the developers. Now, it seemed more like they hadn't put much work into it because no one came to the shop, and just left it with the most basic level of functionality. Besides being the finish point of a quest, where she tapped the top of a table, the only thing I'd ever seen the NPC do was nod.

However, why would she be sleeping now? Maybe it was a just something they had all NPCs do at night? That finally brought to mind, What time is it? A sudden dread washed over me. What if we missed the meeting? I quickly opened my menu, the sound of bells filling the previously silent shop. 4:57 pm. At least we had only been asleep for a few hours. I didn't know when the meeting would start, but since I hadn't gotten any messages from Argo asking where we were, we were probably safe. I let out a relieved breath and waved my hand to make the menu vanish.

However, _now_ the blacksmith NPC was staring at me. After thinking she was, discovering she wasn't and going onto another thought, the fact that she actually _was_ staring at me almost made my heart skip a beat from the surprise. "Oh jeez," I muttered. Then, something occurred to me. Did this stripped down, basic NPC with no intelligence to speak of give us this blanket when we fell asleep?

"Is this yours?" I asked hesitantly. The NPC, Ferin, I had to remind myself, pointed over to a counter on the other side of the shop. There was an empty spot in the middle of a row of rough blankets. That was another thing. Since it was such a basic NPC, why did they give it a name? Probably because it was a quest NPC.

Hmm... I had the worst sense of foreboding. Its seeming innocence and lack of intelligence just made it look like they had put _more_ thought into making this NPC. Like it was designed this way on purpose. After grinding my teeth together in confusion for a few seconds, I sighed and turned around.

"Keiko, can you help me fold this blanket?" I asked. She looked at me with a drowsy, still-half-asleep kind of look, then nodded slowly. We folded the blanket and I set it in its place among the others. Then, I approached the NPC again.

"Mmmmm..." I stared at her intently. "Gray." She gave me a blank look and kind of shrugged, the way NPCs do when they don't understand what you mean. "Is this a shop?" She nodded. So, she could at least answer questions. "Is your name Ferin?" She nodded again. After thinking for a few moments, I asked, "Do you need help?" She nodded. So, she had another quest? Even though she didn't have the question mark symbol marking a quest?

"Then, what do you need?" She nodded. "Huh?" She nodded again. "Wait a minute..." I mumbled to myself. "Is this town called «Tolbana»?" Nod. "Is this town called «Harunka»?" Nod. "Is this town called «Starting City»?" Nod.

I almost beat my head into the wall when I realized what this meant. Her only functionality was to nod whenever she heard a question. Even when the answer was 'no'. Fortunately, before I started strangling said NPC out of frustration, a yellow icon flashed to life in my field of view, informing me that I'd received a message.

『The meeting is starting, where are you two?』 Oh crap, so it was starting soon. I fired back a reply saying we were on our way. Quickly grabbing Keiko's wrist, we shot back out of the small shop and down the again-crowded streets toward the town center.

We made it to the colosseum just in time. Diabel had just gotten everyone quieted down. Argo grabbed my arm as we stood at the top, around the outskirts of the assembly to the far right side. "We've got a problem," were the first words out of her mouth.

"Uh oh, what is it?" I asked quickly.

"I published my info, but no one has actually checked the NPC who sells it, so they don't know it's there. They won't find out until later," she explained with hurried words.

My mind only wheeled for a moment before coming up with a solution. "Got it." All three of us nodded together, clearly on the same page already. "Where's the NPC?"

"Right over there at the open air shop outside the inn." She pointed to the shop she spoke of and we all ran over to grab a copy, amazingly priced at 0 Col. I pulled it out and saw the front cover read 'Argo's Strategy Guide: First Floor Boss edition'. Underneath, there was a line written in red.

[This information is from the time of the SAO beta test. It is possible the current version might be different.] While I didn't hold any grudges, I couldn't ignore the way some people, like that one guy, Kibaou, hated beta testers. Argo really was risking her reputation on this.

To break from my bleak thoughts, I turned and joked, "Hehe, free info from Argo-san, aren't we lucky?"

"Free for everyone else, you already paid the fifty-thousand Col for it," she stuck her tongue out at me and I pouted dramatically. At least I'd eased the knotted feeling in my stomach. Both Argo and Keiko snickered at me momentarily before we shot back across the street to the town center.

We arrived just in time for Diabel to quiet down the crowd after whatever joke he had opened with, maybe another introduction like the day before or something. When his expression grew more intense, everyone leaned forward before he began to speak.

Diabel recounted how his party of six had found the boss's lair and bravely challenged it to an early scouting fight. Without talking about the fight, he explained its name, height type, and weapons. Although he got the boss's main weapon wrong, saying it was a scimitar-type weapon, while it was actually a bone axe. Since it was obvious he was just claiming the information we'd given his as his own, he was probably misremembering that part. While it did irk me slightly, at least it would keep all the attention on him and not us. Oh well, it wouldn't be a problem once everyone got Argo's guide anyway. He went on to explain that three 『Ruin Kobold Sentinels』 appeared as well. Since that was all we had told him, Diabel stopped there.

I saw the opportunity, right here, before they moved on with the discussion to act. I slid down from where we were standing, dropping lightly off the side of the stands, into the little area in front of the door where we were yesterday. With Keiko right at my side, we moved forward, immediately drawing the attention of the crowd, probably even more-so because of our (now slightly tattered) dark cloaks. We probably looked very mysterious at the moment. A look of guilt passed across Diabel's face for just a moment as we approached. Since we were so far from the crowd, I didn't have to worry about anyone else hearing me when I spoke quietly.

"Don't worry about it," obviously referring to the source of his guilt. Then immediately switched topics. "There's something you should know. Argo-san just put out a new strategy guide. It's about the boss, so you should all go get one."

Diabel nodded and said, "Thank you, I'll do that that right now then." We nodded back and slowly moved away, back toward the doorway we had come from, until we had moved into cover, the same way the edge of the stands had covered us before.

Turning to the crowd again, Diabel informed everyone that the NPC across from the town center was selling a new information guide, and they should all get it. In a large mass, everyone left the area for a few minutes, crossing the road, to the the surprise of everyone currently in the streets, and picked up a copy. Keiko and I used the time while everyone was busy to slip out of the colosseum and used the friend tracker to find Argo about a block away, mixed in with the rest of the crowd. Probably keeping out of sight for a while after putting out such a dangerous manual.

"Ok, from here, we just need to hope everything works out well," Argo explained. She was right about that, there wasn't much else we could do at this point. Argo told us she would be lying low for a while, so we headed back to the town center without her to observe the rest of the meeting from atop the wall at the backside of the colosseum. Thankfully, everything went well. They all split up into parties to form the raid group. Strangely, the cloaked girl from before wound up partying with the black-haired boy with the incredible Sword Skills. Although, they were only assigned to fight the small mobs instead of taking on the Boss with the rest of the larger parties.

Once the meeting had dispersed, after just a half hour of discussion, everything was set. I sent a message to Argo, telling her to spread word that the Boss fight would be tomorrow. The same day the mass-suicide was scheduled. If their main motivation was the thought that nothing had been accomplished, then hopefully anyone considering suicide would hear that we were taking down the boss and would at least hold off to see if we made it to the second floor. That just left one thing: beating the boss. When I thought about it, it hadn't really seemed very strong. But that didn't mean much coming from someone twice the level the raid party members. Then, one other thought occurred to me.

Well, just think of it this way, if they fail, there won't be a need for a mass-suicide. We'll all be as good as dead anyway.

Author's Note: I had to change something here. Maybe it was an issue with the translation, but for some reason, both Diabel and Argo's guide said that the boss's main weapon was a 'weapon of the scimitar category' -Diabel and 'main weapon of Talwar' -Argo. Then, when the fight starts, the boss has an 'axe made of bone' -Kirito. So, I changed it in Argo's guide while letting Diabel still get it wrong.


	43. Chapter 43

**Going Forward Going Backward**** Chapter 43**

Author's Note: Just bounced around tvtropes for a few hours trying to figure out what should happen next... and found some oddly relevant tropes (coughijustrightthethingcough)

So, I'm just going to go for it! - - - - - Or not, I kind of fell asleep after writing that. But I'm definitely going to write this chapter now!

It was 5:30 pm when the second boss strategy meeting ended, so we had a good deal of time left in the day. That left us wondering what to do of course. The boss raid would be tomorrow, but we decided not to go. It was too dangerous to fight anything with even a remote chance of killing us if we couldn't endure a single hit. That left us with a couple options. We could wait for them to kill the boss before moving to the second floor, maybe farm some more, go do some more endurance training...

Of course, nothing sounded good and we wound up sitting against the stone wall of a building and not doing anything at all. At least we had the drive to buy new cloaks, with a spare this time, to replace our shredded ones. The armor underneath had remained miraculously undamaged throughout the whole ordeal, which was good, considering how expensive it was.

Since we'd fallen asleep earlier, neither of us grew tired, even as the sun sank through the exposed segment of sky to the West. While my mind wandered, I finally struck a coherent thought. That one attack we'd used earlier. That new Sword Skill, what was it? I pressed two fingers together and flicked open my menu, drawing Keiko's attention. I tapped the rectangle icon to open the status menus and opened skills. My One-handed Sword was listed at the top, then sprint and three-weapon throwing, and finally the various Blessed Twins passives. I tapped One-handed sword and when the info window appeared with all of the usable Sword Skills listed, I checked for a new one among them.

Sure enough, there was a new one. «Flash Draw». I tapped it to open the small window which would show an animation. As I'd expected, the figure drew their sword, placed it near the position for «Slant», but closer to the sheath, then slashed diagonally. The move finished with the sword being replaced in the sheath. Unlike other skills, this one had a small description below. It read 『Can only be used immediately after drawing sword.』

"Ah, I thought so," I said to Keiko, her head resting on my shoulder as she followed along. She nodded a while I waved my hand a couple times, making the menu disappear. I leaned my own head back, letting it rest atop Keiko's for a minute. "Well, what now?"

"I don't know..." she answered slowly.

"As usual, we on the same page. Though I guess that's not such a good thing this time." Another minute passed. "I want to go home." Keiko knew I didn't mean we should head back to our room at the inn. I was talking about our home in the real world.

"I do too, Onii-chan." Keiko answered in a small voice.

I looked off into the faraway sky, wondering to myself. What was this world? This strange floating castle Kayaba Akihiko had created. Why would he create such a beautiful place, just to trap all the players here? I had come to understand that this place was similar to our own reality, even if it was all a game. There wasn't anything in particular I would call 'bad' about this world. However, I liked Earth better myself, since my family was there. Maybe Kayaba didn't like the real world? I had no way of guessing, since I knew nothing about the man. I hadn't even heard his name until we went to that raffle where we won the game.

It was right on the cover; he made it after all.

We sat for a while longer, both lost in our own thoughts, while the crowded streets, bars, and restaurants slowly emptied, until there was no one left but us. The night air was cold, but our cloaks kept us warm, so we had no real motivation to move from that spot.

Eventually, I heard little, cure sounding snores from my right. Keiko had fallen asleep with her head on my shoulder. It felt a bit nostalgic, almost like that first day again, when we had fallen asleep in the middle of the street. I was drowsy as well, but didn't feel like I would fall asleep against my will this time, so I just sat there for some time more, letting my mind blank out as I stared at the small strip of sky. It was strange, even though stars in the real world were millions of years away from Earth, these small lights felt like they were watching us from much, much farther.

I felt something hit my foot all of a sudden. "Eeeaaahh!" A loud shout, followed by a crash right in front of me drew my attention. I glanced over at the heap on the ground, a player who seemed to have tripped over my outstretched legs. "Ow, what did I trip-" he cut short when he turned and saw two cloaked figures sitting right there. The boy shot up to his feet. "Sorry, I didn't see you there, it's really dark right now," he apologized quickly. In the darkness, I had to look closely before I realized it was someone I knew. Well, sort of. It was the black-haired boy who had helped us open the dungeon.

"It's you!" I exclaimed suddenly, without meaning to. He immediately reeled back, a look of terror crossing his face.

"Ummnn," Keiko's mumble came from next to me as she started to wake up. I stood, using my right hand to help support her weight. I moved closer to the boy who had backed away several steps.

"Remember us?" I asked while pulling off the long hood of my cloak with my free hand. As soon as he saw my face, his look of horror made a complete turnaround, going straight to confused. It seemed like he had totally forgotten about us, so I said, "We're the ones who were there that day to open the dungeon entrance. The ones who took the «Weapon Throwing» skill just to do it?" I finished in a questioning tone, wanting to see if I had reminded him yet. On a whim, I added, "though, the skill has definitely been useful since then," flicking my hand out of my cloak to show three needles fitted snugly between my fingers. Even though it was so dark, he would be able to see them with the overhead streetlamps sending a slanting shine off their metal surfaces.

"I see..." he said slowly, eyes glued to the weapons in my hand. I could see the recognition in his eyes now. I quickly flicked them back into the pouch I had pulled them from.

"So, there's been something I've wanted to ask you for the longest time, but I've only ever seen you at a distance since that time. It's about your Sword Skills. Do you have any advice for exactly how to make them so strong?" His nervous smile turned disbelieving when he heard my question.

"T,that's really all you wanted? Then, how to explain..." he put his hand on his chin for a minute, before making an "ah" sound. "I guess the best way to explain would be, try to do a Sword Skill without the System Assist."

"Huh?" That made no sense at all. If it wasn't System Assisted, it wasn't a Sword Skill. Besides that, there was no way to move as fast as a Sword Skill without the System Assist anyway.

"To practice, just temporarily disable your One-handed Sword skill, so you don't activate System Assist when you start the attack. Practice your sword swings like you would in the real world if you were learning Kendo. Just do them over and over until you know the movement become more natural. Then, when you're using that sword skill, just move the same way and it will boost the skill more."

I thought about it, then, "Actually, that makes sense. Just trying to move with the Sword Skill when you're doing it can only go so far without actually knowing how the real movement feels." I paused briefly, then asked, "but there's no way to move the same way without the Assist..."

"Well, not exactly. Remember, things here aren't limited by normal physical restrictions. With enough practice, it's possible to move almost as fast as with the assist. Of course, that takes a long time..." he scratched the back of his head a little as he said that.

"Oooohhh," I said slowly. "Now I get it, you're a Beta Tester, that's how you could do that..." He'd said he had been practicing. He must have had some extra time during the Beta to do that. A look of shock crossed the boy's face. "Oops." I'd forgotten for a moment that such a topic was nearly taboo for most people. "A,aaahh, you know, don't worry about it! I won't tell anyone. Besides, I don't know your name anyway, so... yeah..." I waved my hands frantically trying to dismiss it. In doing so, I accidentally let go of Keiko and had to grab her before she fell over.

"So, we're cool?" I asked hesitantly, turned halfway around as my arms wrapped around my sister.

"Hehehe..." the boy laughed awkwardly, without any real humor in his voice. "I guess so..." He quickly excused himself to go on a nighttime hunting run and continued on his way. From a distance, I heard him mutter something like, "too many girls..."

I sat Keiko back on the ground and drew my sword, swishing it around and back down to the starting position for my new Sword Skill. The blade took on a red glow again as I held it in position. The glow grew slightly before an intense flash crossed the blade. It only lasted an instant, before the light dimmed and turned to more of a murky color. I let the skill go, cutting up in a rather shallow line, my sword only reaching shoulder height. It didn't move me forward this time, and despite the lower starting position, «Flash Draw» actually struck at an angle between «Slant» and «Horizontal». Much more flat than I had thought during that first attack.

As my sword clinked back into its leather sheath, I noted the power. Unlike the impressive attack I had unleashed earlier, this one had lacked power. As I'd half-expected, there was a timing to the skill. That flash before must have been the moment where the strike would hit the hardest. Too early was ok, but too late yielded very little power. At least, that's what it seemed like based on the way the lighting effects grew brighter on stronger skills. I still couldn't really be sure, since I had no luck figuring out what the colors might mean. I mean, «Vertical» was red, while «Slant» was purple, and «Horizontal» was green. So far, they just seemed random. Maybe as I unlocked more Sword Skills, I would be able to figure out some sort of pattern.

In the middle of my thoughts, a sudden yawn bubbled up inside me. I looked back over at Keiko, still resting against the building. Her eyelids were fluttering, meaning she was just at the edge between sleeping and waking. Talking to that boy had helped me regain the drive to move forward again. I tapped Keiko on the shoulder to out of her light sleep. I needed to check with her to see if she agreed with my next plan.

Keiko yawned, her face scrunching up as her hand came up to cover her mouth. She blinked up at me a few times before extending a hand so I could pull her to her feet. We moved into the closest bar, sitting at one of the booths in the deserted building. The NPC waiter approached immediately, since there were no other customers. When asked, we ordered coffees and some bread. The coffee would help wake us up some, while the bread would sate the beginnings of hunger I could feel in my stomach.

"I finally figured out what we should do next," I informed Keiko. "Let's go back to «Horunka» and see if we can dig up anything about our missing memories. Sound good?" She agreed with my plan.

After we finished our meal, Keiko suddenly asked, "Onii-chan, even though it's late, how about we leave now? If we run, we can get to the «Starting City» quickly and rest for the night. Then, we can go to «Horunka» in the morning." Even if it was nighttime, when it was usually dangerous to go outside, we really didn't have to worry. If some of the strongest monsters on this floor could only take slivers out of our hp, nothing back in the lower level areas would even be able to hurt us. So, I nodded and we headed off.

«Starting City» was about halfway across the floor from «Tolbana». From my estimation, something like four and a half, maybe five kilometers(~3 miles). It would be a good opportunity to time ourselves, to test just how fast we could get around using «Sprint». We moved to the edge of the city and watched the clock to wait for a minute change, then set off at exactly 11:42. We sprinted straight toward «Starting City» on the most direct route we could take.

The land flew beneath our feet, our long cloaks billowing behind us as we ran faster than humanly possible in the real world. Surely, anyone who saw us wouldn't even believe their eyes. Whenever we passed a group of enemies, we didn't bother to change course. We would pass by so fast that by the time we entered their aggro range and they turned to fight, we had already passed out of their maximum chase range.

When our feet clapped loudly against the hard stones of «Starting City's» streets, we slowed down, breathing hard now. Even with our incredible agility, running like that was still a bit tiring. I checked the time. After a few seconds of standing with my eyes on the numbers, the next minute had passed and it now displayed 11:49. So, we had run the whole distance between two cities in slightly under seven minutes. We both sank to the ground beside a building, laughing. As far as I knew, it took like four or five minutes to run one kilometer. We were closer to a minute and a half for that distance. While I preferred the real world, Sword Art Online had a few things which definitely made it a nice place to live. Like the superhuman strength it afforded players. I definitely enjoyed that part myself.

It was just about midnight when we dragged ourselves into an inn, only to find that all the rooms were full. Back out into the streets, into the next full inn, then the next. It quickly became apparent that all the inns were full. Even the largest city in this world could hardly accommodate so many people- at least, not in at the inns anyway. We asked one of the innkeeper NPCs if there were any free rooms in any inns in the city, and were informed that there were only a couple. However, the NPC didn't know which inns had the free rooms. That basically meant we would have to wander for a long time to find one out of maybe a hundred inns which had a single opening. Since Keiko was tired and following me, we weren't going to find anything.

After some number of hours, we had moved through the center of the city and I was considering just going to «Horunka» tonight. Keiko suddenly stopped, a sense of confusion, or wonder passing through our link. I peered past her as she knelt down, seeing that very young boy, a player according to his cursor, had bumped into her. It was a strange sight, maybe eleven or twelve years old, he still wore the starting clothes, with their mismatched colors and various patches. He looked scared and was saying that he had been sleepy and accidentally wandered away. Of course, that left him lost and scared in the middle of a huge city.

Unlike our search for a place to sleep, his story was enough to wake Keiko up enough to pat him on the head and say that we would help him find his way back. She took his hand and started walking, so I fell into step a few paces back while she led the little boy around. Suddenly, the little boy shouted, pointing up ahead to a very tall building. When we came closer, I realized it was a church. I'd noticed a few churches around, but they were mostly just a tiny building tucked away between other buildings. At least, in the other towns I'd been to.

As if to reject those other churches, this one was tall, with a large spire, taller than all the surrounding buildings. A large cross, with a circle connecting the points, identical to the christian symbol, topped the roof. Made of white marble, it reflected enough light to stand apart from the darkness of the next floor beyond. We approached the church quickly, keeping pace with the small boy. He pushed the doors open, and we crossed into the building, inadvertently saying, "Excuse our intrusion," when we came inside.

We immediately came face to face with a slightly older woman. Well, compared to the average anyway. She was probably twenty or so. She had dull blue, short-cut hair and green eyes behind her round glasses. Her clothing was a little better than the starter equipment, probably one or two steps up, and she had a dagger at her waist. Relief flooded across her face as soon as she turned toward us, her eyes on the boy now running toward her. He threw his arms around her and buried his face into her stomach, shouting, "Sasha onee-san, I was so scared!" She quickly tried to shush him, saying that the other children were sleeping. Once he had calmed down and she got him to head back off to bed, the young woman, Sasha, turned her gaze toward us.

"I suppose you were the ones who brought little Kyosuke back?" she asked while she approached with short steps. We nodded at the same time. Despite her words or thanks, Sasha's face looked a bit worried. After a moment, it occurred to me that it was probably impolite to keep our hoods on inside, and worrying this young woman as well. I nudged Keiko while I thought that and she picked up on what I was thinking. In a moment, we pulled off our hoods. Shock registered on the woman's face for a moment, before she bowed, saying a much more polite thanks.

After she straightened again, a curious expression replaced the embarrassed one she had worn while thanking us. Huh, she certainly moved from one emotion to the next very quickly...

"You two, aren't from around here, are you?" Her eyes traveled up and down, as if to inspect us, though the rest of our bodies were hidden by hour cloaks.

"Yeah, I guess you could say we're on an adventure right now. We were just going to stop in «Starting City» for the night."

"An adventure? What kind?" She asked with a look halfway between excitement and fear.

"Well, it's kind of a long story..." I wasn't sure where to start, and I was pretty tired as well. It would probably be for the best to excuse ourselves quickly and get back to searching for a room while Keiko was still awake enough to take the lead, so we would actually be able to find one this time.

However—

"You see, we have amnesia. We're missing a few days from about a month ago. We just found out that something extremely important happened during that time, so we need to go back and investigate. We were just stopping here for the night, but there are no rooms available at any of the inns."

"I see..." Sasha replied slowly. Her face showed no signs of suspicion, just sympathy. "If that's the case, you can stay here. It's safe enough inside the church."

"R,really?" I asked in disbelief.

She nodded quickly, then, "I've been helping children, but you're welcome to stay whenever you are in need as well. My name is Sasha," she introduced herself.

"Rai," Keiko answered immediately.

"Rei," I followed up. Sasha giggled, probably at our names, then blinked a few times.

"Your names... they don't display..."

"Ah, about that, what did Argo-san call it...?" Keiko started.

Having thought about it recently, I followed up for her. "It's an «Outside of System Skill» called «System Misdetection»." I explained quickly.

Keiko picked up from there. "Basically, the system doesn't place show our names because we're identical, so no one can really tell who's who," pointing back and forth between us. Sasha thought about it for a minute, but her next words came as a surprise.

"Wait, you know Argo? You mean _the_ Argo?"

We were taken aback for a moment, and part of my mind noted that she had spoken Argo's name as if they were close. "W,well, yeah. We trade information with her sometimes..." I said hesitantly.

"That's amazing, what's she like?" Sasha's eyes were shining. It was the kind of look when someone was talking about an idol or a celebrity they admired. Was Argo really that famous? I'd never really thought about it before...

Actually, she probably was extremely well known, even here. Because she was only one who had made a newspaper. A newspaper sold in every city, which must have included here too. So, in the city where everyone was just holing up and waiting, the only outside news came from Argo. She was probably the most famous person in SAO because of it, now that I thought about it...

Keiko was looking at me expectantly. It looked like she didn't want to tell this young woman that Argo wasn't all that nice, and was leaving that up to me.

Thanks a lot.

I thought the word with enough sarcastic discontent to ensure Keiko got my point through our bond. She confirmed it with a nervous smile. "W,well... Argo-san is... umm. Well, she's really smart, and good with money... and she knows a lot..." I'd just managed to scratch over all of her good qualities. Sasha was still staring intently, so I scrounged around for at least one more thing. "And she has a lot of agility..." I eked out.

"Uwaa!" Sasha squealed suddenly, in a way I wouldn't expect from looking at her. She must really like Argo... Before she could push the conversation any further, Keiko said that we were really tired and asked where we could sleep. Sasha's goofy, girlishness quickly disappeared. She coughed, her expression becoming carefully neutral again as she showed us to empty side-room where we could sleep. We thanked her and laid down. There wasn't anything to lay on and the floor was made of stone, but at least we had somewhere safe to stay.

Due to the cold which permeated the entire structure, we only took off our armor, while leaving on our cloaks and normal clothing for warmth. Then lie down close together, with Keiko against the wall. By this point, we were so tired that Keiko quickly fell asleep again. However, I still couldn't manage to sleep at all.

Just like last night, I lie drowsy, but awake all night.

Author Note: Finally! I did it! *cries*


	44. Chapter 44

**Circle**** Chapter 44**

I reached up a few seconds before my alarm was set to go off and switched it off. Again, I had not managed a single second of true sleep. I pushed myself up from the floor, standing and glancing around the room for the probably the millionth time. As always, there was nothing here. It was a completely empty room, walls and floor made of smooth stone. It wasn't even that big. I shook my head of those thoughts and reached down to wake Keiko. While I had settled into the habit of sitting next to the bed until she woke, there was no bed here. I wasn't in such a good mood from not getting an ounce of sleep, and I had better things to do than sit of the cold stone floor and daydream.

I shook her shoulder lightly and she woke with a long yawn. It was just after 6:00 am when we left the church, Sasha giving us a small wave goodbye, and took to the streets. There were a number of sleepy looking people walking around, but the creepy thing was how everyone wore the original starting clothes, no armor or weapons to speak of.

We had skipped equipping our armor before leaving, though it didn't keep us from standing out. While it wasn't particularly uncomfortable, it wasn't comfortable either. We didn't need to worry about getting hurt in an Inner Area, so there was no problem leaving it in our inventories for now. That just left us with our regular clothes and cloaks. Of course, the cloaks we had bought to keep attention off us now served to just draw more.

As we passed through a courtyard on our way to the edge of the city, periodic shouts, coming at random intervals, caught our attention. "Want to check it out?" I asked. She closed her eyes momentarily before nodding. We crossed through a small section of bushes, coming out to a strange sight. There were a number of players scattered around, still in starter clothes, but armed. They were holding their swords up, swinging in downward cutting motion once in a while and letting out a "ha!" shout each time, like they were practicing Kendo, but, not quite.

One more player was traveling around, trying with a distressed look to explain something to all these players. No one came withing twenty meters of the scene in the plaza, so when we approached, everyone slowed or stopped what they were doing to look our way.

After our two groups stared awkwardly at each other for a few seconds, I coughed, then asked, "What are you guys doing?" As I scanned the crowd, I saw that the majority were teenage boys, generally between my age and seventeen, by the looks of them, their instructor included. There were only a couple who looked in their twenties.

One young boy exclaimed that they were training, while the apparent instructor stepped forward. He looked just shy of twenty, his sideburns coming low under his puffy, curly brown hair. First introducing himself, "I'm Thinker, I've been gathering players here who have the will to fight, but not the skill. I'm trying to teach them how to activate Sword Skills. I haven't been very successful yet though..." he murmured with a discouraged expression. From there, he explained that they had been trying to figure out how to activate the skills for a while, and he had finally gotten it to work. Once. No one had had any further luck since. He'd been trying to explain the correct position for a «Vertical» for the last few days, but with no success, since he couldn't manage to reproduce it himself.

It was strange, why were they having so much trouble? After seeing Klein do it, everyone had been able to recreate the action in mere minutes. But it was taking them _days_?

"We can help," Keiko offered.

"Y,yeah," I added quickly. If we could teach these guys how to fight, more players would eventually reach the top to reinforce the current players who died. We would be in dire need before long if the death rate continued as it was.

So, we had everyone surround us in a semicircle and drew our swords, much to the awe of our audience. "The Sword Skill you were working on is called «Vertical»." However, I stopped there, reminding myself that I had to go all the way back to the basics, as I'd been taught myself. "Actually, everyone check your skills menu, do you all have One-handed Sword set? Everyone did as we instructed. While almost all did, it turned out that a few didn't. After explaining, "without the skill for a weapon, you won't be able to activate Sword Skills with that weapon," we got it all sorted out.

Repeating my first instruction, I went into an explanation. "The Sword Skill you were practicing is called «Vertical». It's a single downward slash." I spread my feet and brought my sword up slowly, moving my hand to the familiar position, slightly in front of my forehead, with the tip of my sword tilted back slightly from being straight up and down. I had to focus, forcing myself not to carry through with the Sword Skill immediately, but hold it in that position while the blade began to glow with a soft red light. "You hold your sword just like this, about forehead height, almost vertical, and it will begin to glow red." They all followed my movement, some gaining the red glow on their blades, but most not.

I checked the position of everyone who had failed to activate the skill. While most just needed to shift their hand slightly in one direction or another, a few had their feet placed wrong. While the system would allow Sword Skills to activate in most stances, due to the need to use an attack from any situation, it was finicky when the player was airborne or had their feet placed directly next to each other. "You have to widen your stances, like this." I bounced on my feet slightly to indicate a the positioning for a neutral combat stance, but realized after they gave me blank stares, that my cloak was working against me again. "Aah, woops. Sorry about that. One moment." Since my cloak, useful for not giving away my movements was doing its job, my legs and feet were completely hidden from view, giving them absolutely no indication of what stance I was talking about.

I managed to open my menu with the sword still in my hand, since it could only be opened with one's right hand, then operated my menu with my left to remove my cloak. I still wasn't wearing my armor, nor any of my extra equipment, so I was just dressed in a plain green shirt, a slightly flared hem being its only notable part, and a blue pleated skirt, which I felt was too short as it did not even reach the middle of my thighs. My boots were missing the greave reinforcement and knee pads. Pauldrons, breastplate, and everything else was missing as well. As the cloak vanished from around me, the entire group's jaws hit the ground at once. Overall, I felt strangely normal looking in this fantasy world without my equipment. But of course, I knew this wasn't what amazed them.

"Oi, no gawking, this is training!" I said in a harsh voice. In a more mild tone, trying for my best teacher-like voice, "so, widen your stance like this," again bouncing on my heels slightly, "and raise your sword just like before. From here, just shift it around bit by bit until you feel the system take hold. Believe me, you'll know when you feel it. Hold that position for a bit so you remember it well, then let the System Assist take over and it will bring you through the Sword Skill." As I finished explaining, I followed my own instruction, allowing the System Assist to pull my sword downward. I didn't put any effort into the skill, so it wouldn't go too fast for them all to follow. I left my blade in the position, aimed slightly down from my waist, where it stopped, as a number of the players followed suit.

Slowly, carefully, I repeated the action a few times, as they all mirrored my actions. When I had gotten everyone to follow successfully, I closed the lesson with some more instructions, so they could continue to get stronger. "Remember to check your skills in the status menu, if you open up your One-handed Sword Skill, it will list available Sword Skills. If you open up the skills, it will show you rough diagram of how to do it. Just practice for a while until you manage to get the position right whenever you get a new Sword Skill." I looked around as everyone nodded, a few opening their menus to check exactly what I was talking about.

"Only one more thing. When you successfully activate a Sword Skill, instead of just letting the System Assist control the attack, if you try to put your own effort behind it as well, your attack can become much stronger." This time, they looked a bit confused, so I quickly demonstrated, bringing my sword up for another «Vertical». This time, after hesitating momentarily, I swept my sword downward, boosting the skill with my own motion. The difference was immediately noticeable. Both the speed and the power increased, a small gust of wind pushing out from my attack. The line of light left by the attack also seemed to hover in midair a little longer than before after my attack ended.

I slid the blade back into its sheath at my side and after a bow, turned to leave. However, a hand closed on my elbow before I could move. I glanced back to see that it was Thinker.

Thinker stumbled over his words repeatedly as he tried to explain. "Before you leave, I have a question. You see- I intend to create a group to help players fight safely, so we can spread the wealth through the city and improve the quality of life for its residents. If we get strong enough, maybe we can even help the rest of the players. Your help here has already brought us a long way toward my goal of creating a group like that. I know I shouldn't ask for more help than we've already received... but... would you like to join? My group- I mean. We could really use some more experienced players with us..."

I thought about his proposal briefly, turning to Keiko for confirmation on my decision. She nodded her agreement, and I said, "Sorry, maybe another time. We have something else we're going right now. It's important that we see it through. So, sometimes later, when your group grows larger, if you still have need of us, send us a message. I tapped his cursor and added him as a friend, bringing our friends list up to two people. Again, when I turned to leave, Thinker spoke up to stop me.

"Hey, you seem like you're from the frontlines. Have you heard about them fighting the Boss today? Is it true?" 'Frontlines', that was a new term, but oddly fitting.

"Yeah, it's true. When did you hear about it?" I asked, curious as to how Argo had spread the word.

"It was in the paper this morning," he explained simply.

"Oh. Does everyone read the paper?" I wanted to be sure everyone had heard.

"Yeah, it's about the only thing most people do besides sitting in their rooms or waiting for those cheap apples to fall so they can sell them for a couple Col," Thinker said with a sad expression.

"Oh! That reminds me," I started. I gave him a couple tips about the boars outside the city, like keeping a couple of those apples in case they came across a docile one, so they could tame it. Also, to watch out for a boar with red eyes, because it would explode when killed, stunning anyone nearby and release a strong field boss monster which they probably wouldn't be able to fight at their level.

Thinker bowed in thanks and we finally went on our way. I quickly reequipped my cloak. Though it didn't stop the stares coming from the city residents, at least it kept them from being lustful stares. Now that I thought about it, with the vast majority of the population being male, most of them probably hadn't seen a girl in the last month. And to think, it would only get worse the longer this death game dragged on.

We passed outside of the city limits, 『Outer Area』 appearing in my view, and put all our equipment back on. While Keiko opened up the floor map to get a heading for «Horunka», I noticed another player in the largely deserted field. At a distance, all I could make out was that the player was having a tough battle against a 『Frenzy Boar』, apparently unable to use Sword Skills, the same as those other players. That meant that player must be one of a few things. Either courageous, stupid, or suicidal. From the looks of it, I had to go with the first, since, despite their lack of battle experience, they were handling themselves quite well. It just happened that our direction headed near the battle, so we shot off, though slower than our usual full-sprint, as we watched the battle unfold.

The player dodge around while buffeting the boar with strong looking blows, though they lacked the innate speed and power of Sword Skills. The player slowly whittled down the boar's hp, until it finally reached the red zone. When we came close enough, only a dozen meters or so to the left of the battle, I could finally make out the player well enough to realize that they were actually a girl. Despite looking only twenty or so, she had flat gray hair, a little longer than her shoulders, but tied up in a ponytail behind her. Though she was struggling, the young woman seemed to be able to handle herself, and was in no real danger. So, we passed by, minding our own business.

However, after we passed, I couldn't help but glance back. The boar charged past as she sidestepped—

What I saw at that moment made my blood turn to ice. My feet froze mid-stride and I faceplanted into the ground. Keiko stopped short just past me.

"Onii-chan?!"

"Red..." Was all I could stammer out, pushing myself back up on shaking arms. I shot to my feet, turning back to face the battle. "Red eyes!" I shrieked. The player finally landed the killing blow, but the boar didn't shatter. It exploded. It was the exact monster we had warned Thinker about not five minutes ago. 『The Great Boar Lord』. The explosion knocked the woman to the ground, a paralysis icon appearing over top of her health bar. In front of her stood the giant, boar, as tall as a horse and wider around, with sharp tusks pointing from either side of its head. It let loose a mad squeal and in a moment, bore down on the paralyzed woman with a sure-kill charge attack.

We both shot forward as if fired out of a cannon. The ground whipped past as we sprinted as fast as we possibly could, covering the distance back in a fraction of the time. We drew our swords as one, dropping them down into position for our strongest skill. A moment of hesitation, until the instant when the charge reached its peak, and I didn't even think of letting the System Assist take over on this one. I struck out with all this body could summon, firing forward in a rush that blurred everything around my target. My blade struck home with a powerful crashing sound and fireworks fired in every direction from the explosively powerful Sword Skill. The twin blades tore straight through the boar's face, large damage effects bursting from its forehead.

However, it wasn't enough—

The crushing impact smashed into my chest and knocked the air from my lungs. My body seemed to wrap around the boar's large snout as it kept running. In a moment, it drove shoved its nose toward the ground, grinding my back against the ground and whipping me off of its face. The next thing I knew, a storm of heavy hooves were crashing down all over my body, smashing into my chest, arms, legs, face, everywhere. When it ended moments which seemed more like an eternity, later, I lie flat on my back, shoulders twitching as my conscious mind screamed in agony. However, my virtual body just couldn't manage to portray the feeling. Instead, random spasms racked my body for a few moments until the immediate agony dulled into lingering pains. I had only lost about 30% of my hp. Nearly 700 points. Back at level 1, that would have been enough damage to kill me twice over, with plenty to spare.

Fortunately, I had the moments it took the boar to turn around for its next charge to try and seize control over myself again. It began its return and I shook myself violently to force my stunned limbs to obey. I rolled sideways, grabbing Keiko, who had suffered the same attack, and just managing to avoid its crashing hooves again. However, it tilted its head down and a sharp tusk raked down my back, extracting a scream through my gritted teeth.

I managed to push Keiko back to her feet, who had began to recover from the shock and was now wielding her sword with almost enough strength to swing it again. I continued to roll along the ground as I fought down the pain. The boar had turned for another charge, still aiming for me, when I got my shaky legs under myself. The last attack had knocked another 10% off of my hp bar, leaving me close to the yellow zone. I drew my sword from the sheathe again, throwing myself sideways as the boar tore past again. Our incredible attacks had knocked out its first three bars of hp. Just one to go.

Now that we had mostly recovered from the shock of an attack, the rest of the fight shouldn't be much of a problem. Our main goal, to keep the woman on the ground, from being killed, had succeeded. Now we just had to finish the fight. I drew my sword across my body, into position for a «Horizontal», until the boar's charge brought it right to me. A quick sideways dash allowed me to tear straight through the monster while it passed. Keiko, from the side, hurled a flurry of needles into the soft flanks and face of the boar as its hp continued to drop rapidly. My left hand shot out, my own needles landing right with Keiko's. Before the boar even had a chance to turn for another assault, our simultaneous attacks brought its hp to zero and it shattered in a grand display of particals.

We both sank to the ground were we were, breathing hard after that lightning-fast fight. It was so different from the first time. Unlike the first time, we were in no real danger of dying. We hadn't even lost half of our health to its attacks this time. And yet, it was still just as terrifying, since it really felt like we were fighting. It actually felt like our lives were really on the line now. Now that we really felt everything that happened. In a strange way, it also made these bodies more real. They weren't just puppets we controlled. They really were us, we could feel every little pain that afflicted us.

After a short while, I heard the shuffling of clothes that let me know the woman we saved had finally recovered from the paralysis effect. I turned toward her, as did Keiko a few meters away.

She spoke slowly, in a slightly deeper voice than most women. "Thank you. You saved my life... I... I don't know how to repay you..." Her eyes were cast toward the ground while she spoke, shame apparent on her face.

After a minute of silence, Keiko spoke up. "Here's how you can pay us back. First, go back to the city and look for a man named Thinker. You can tell him two hooded players sent you, but it doesn't really matter. As long as you make it apparent that you want to fight, he'll teach you. If you join him and his group, and you'll definitely be able to level up in the safety of a group." Keiko paused for a few moments as the woman nodded earnestly. "Second, don't attack any more boars with red eyes." She sounded a bit exhausted as she spoke.

"Thank you. I'll always remember your kindness." She bowed, giving her name, "Yulier." We managed what bows we could from where we were sitting in response. She turned and left, her direction toward the city.

After resting for a while, we got up again and kept going on our way to «Horunka».

"Hey, Keiko," I said as we ran.

"What is it, Onii-chan?"

"I just thought of something. This world makes me think of a circle. Everything here goes around and around in a circle. I mean, when we came here, we learned how to use sword skills, then fought that giant boar, and went to «Horunka». When we came back again, instead of being taught, we were the teachers, we fought off the same mad boar, but without coming close dying, and we're heading off to «Horunka» again, this time of our own will, with an actual purpose. What I'm saying is, we've gone completely in a circle, coming right back to where we started. However, now that we're here, it's all completely different..."

I wasn't really sure what I was trying to get across. It was some kind of feeling, not really like nostalgia, or deja'vu, but something I just couldn't really put my finger on. It was like everything was the same, but different. I tried to put it into words again.

"It feels like... like going back to a park I haven't been to since I was little. But... nothing changed... the park is exactly the same. What changed... is me."


	45. Chapter 45

**Footsteps**** Chapter 45**

Our pace slowly dropped from a sprint as we moved into the boundry of «Horunka». Being an even shorter run than from «Tolbana» to «Starting City», it hadn't even taken five minutes. However, it felt even shorter because I had spent the entire period with Keiko's words still ringing in my ears.

After I had said what was on my mind, how I'd realized how much I'd changed, her answer had come after a few moments. "Not just you, I've changed too." After she had said those words, I'd started thinking about it. While before she had just been happy-go-lucky,(emphasis on the lucky part) now she could become dead serious when necessary. She was just as good as me in a fight, and wouldn't hesitate to lead the charge. Though, some things had stayed the same, despite everything. While she could be serious, thankfully, she was still her ever-smiling self most of the time.

"Onii-chan!" her shout suddenly pulled my attention from my thoughts.

"A,ah? What?" I stammered, cringing backward at the angry look on her face.

"I've been trying to talk to you!" she growled.

"Ah, sorry, sorry..." I said placatingly. She glared at me momentarily, before I followed with, "So, what were you saying?"

Suddenly, her expression completely turned around as a large smile spread across her face and she started talking. "I was asking what we should do now. We came to investigate, but how do we do that exactly?"

"I see your point..." I said slowly, I hadn't actually put a lot of thought into the _how_. "Then, for now, let's retrace our steps from the time of the last battle." The town was small, so it wasn't hard to find the intersection where we'd had the final fight, especially since there was still a giant slash into the corner of one building from the Boss's powerful downward slash. From there, we retraced our steps, up to the roofs, back down to the street, around town to the various places we had went in the aftermath... We walked through the moderately populated streets, weaving through groups of players as we retraced everywhere we had gone, checking each location and looking around for anything suspicious.

Eventually, we reached the end of our memory, having found nothing whatsoever. The last thing was us heading out of town, heading East. We moved down the road slowly, looking all around as we did. The only other clue we had was that we had interfered with players who were trying to do the quest for the «Anneal Blade». However, we didn't know where the quest started, so when we reached the apparently normal street that occupied our last memory, we asked the closest player where we could find the quest. He chuckled and pointed at the house right next to us. Keiko and I looked at each other meaningfully, which actually seems kind of weird, since we couldn't see each others' expressions with our hoods on.

However, our link told us that we were both thinking the same thing. While we had heard that we were there, Argo hadn't given any time. In all of the three days, we could have gone there at any point. This player had told us that the quest start was right at the end of the road where our memory vanished. The immediate thought in both of our minds was: does that mean we went in right after? And does that mean that's the cause of our missing memory? After a quick thanks, we started heading off when he called out to us again.

"You might be disappointed though, there are a lot of other players doing the same quest, so it can take a whole week to complete," he informed us. We bowed quickly to show our thanks, though we had no real intention of completing the quest. We already had strong swords, and upgrading our equipment wasn't our goal on this trip. We wanted to fix our problem so we could move on.

We pushed through the door and I immediately noticed how warm it was inside. At least, it was a lot warmer than outside. Almost without me noticing, the temperature had been dropping ever since we started playing a month ago. It made me think that Aincrad's seasons were designed to follow the seasons in the real world. It already mirrored the day/night schedule, since every day was a full twenty-four hours. Argo had mentioned that in most games, a game day was just a few hours of real time, so players who could only play for a little while each day would get to see the game at different times. Of course, now that we were here, it was blatantly obvious why Kayaba had opted for a full day instead. Just one more thing on the ever-growing list of things that totally gave away his true intentions from far before the full service started. Too bad no one noticed until now.

My eyes swept across the room, four players inside at the moment. One looked rather new, while the other three wore heavier metal armor which spoke of them being higher level. The most noticeable was the one with a large helmet with three horns coming from the top. There was one woman inside, stirring a pot of some sort of soup or stew on the stove. As we stopped a little ways into the room, the young man with the three-horned helm stepped up to the woman, an NPC according to her cursor, and handed her a small green pearl.

She quickly said her thanks, then walked over to a small chest on the floor and reached inside. When I peered past the players to look into the chest, it was strangely shaded so that within inches, all light vanished and the inside of the chest was completely covered in darkness. From inside, she retrieved a sword, immediately recognizable as the «Anneal Blade». She handed it over to the player, while saying more words of thanks. At the same time, the two other high level players moved squeezed past us in the narrow room, heading for the door. Once she finished, the young man shot up into the air, shouting, "Yes! Finally!"

"Ryufior, let's get going." I turned to see that the other two high level players had stopped in the doorway. It was a party of three, apparently. "My friend sent me a message earlier. It seems that they're finally doing the Boss Raid today. We have to get back to «Starting City» so we can use the teleport gate to get to the second floor as soon as it opens. I've heard there are a few good farming spots if we can get there early enough-"

"Wait, what? They're doing the Boss Raid today? Why didn't we hear about this earlier?" The man, Ryufior, shot back in surprise.

"Apparently they only found it yesterday, but Argo managed to dig up the beta test info, so they're going today instead of doing scouting battles. It was posted in the paper this morning, but there's no info NPC in this town that sells it." That immediately sent off warning bells in my head. The paper wasn't published in this town? So there were people who didn't know about the boss raid?

Wait. Anyone who came here at least plans on trying to clear the game, so they're not the ones who are thinking of killing themselves. So, it's not an issue if they don't hear about it immediately. All the ones worth worrying about are back in «Starting City», where the paper was definitely published and read by everyone. I let out a relieved sigh.

Ryufior was speaking again, and brought my attention back to their conversation. "Oh man, that's just my luck. We just went through all that work to get my new sword, but we're too late to get into the Boss Raid, which was the whole reason I wanted a stronger sword in the first place." He bent forward in defeat while moving out of the small house while his friends tried cheering him up by saying they'd get it reinforced so he could use it for the next raid.

The door swung shut, leaving just us, the one new looking player, and the NPC woman. We continued to wait while the player with just a few pieces of light leather armor, and original «Small Sword» spoke to the NPC to start the quest. According to her story, her daughter had come down with an illness untreatable by regular medicine. She needed an ovule from a 『Little Nepent』. The whole time, the dry coughs of a little girl repeatedly came from somewhere in the house. So, it was a rare drop type of quest. Maybe we would do it after all... I had to shake my head to clear that thought. We weren't here for that.

The thing was, those were our favorite quests, because they were always quests to hunt a certain type of monster until it dropped a very rare quest item. Since the quest was designed with the thought that it would take hundreds of kills, the rewards for such a quest were on a whole different level from any other quest types. If it was that type of quest, it explained why the reward was the strongest sword available on this floor.

The reason why it was our favorite quest type was, of course, because we only ever needed to kill one monster to find the quest item. So we could complete the most aggravating grinding quests in no time at all, getting their amazing rewards with nearly no effort. Although, up to this point, all of those quests were for other things, like strong potions, axes, maces, and other types of weapons. While they were usually really strong, we couldn't use them, and wound up just selling them off.

The player finished receiving the quest and left, finally leaving us alone with the NPC. According to the somewhat sketchy story which had brought us back here, we had been seen leaving this house with the quest NPC. However, that NPC was supposedly named Agatha. This young woman was only marked 『NPC』, so it couldn't be her. So, either the info was wrong, or the NPC we were looking for wasn't the quest giver, but the daughter she was talking about. Except, I didn't see the daughter anywhere. Another fit of coughs rang out as if to remind me that she was in the house, just not this room.

My eyes followed the source of the sound to a door on the far wall. I walked over slowly, the NPC woman taking no notice, and tried turning the doorknob.

Locked. Probably not an area players could go. There might not even be anything there at all, which would mean the info was wrong.

We both sank down against the wall. "So, what now?" Keiko asked.

While I was thinking, a new voice called out. "Good morning, travelers. You two look tired, I do wish to offer you some food, but I do not have any at the moment. All I can give, is a single cup of water or so." We both blinked at her in surprise for a few moments, before Keiko found her voice.

"Y,yes..." she managed, though she couldn't really follow up with anything else. The NPC woman poured some water into a cup, then handed it to Keiko. Huh, she really did have just one cup. Keiko and I slowly passed the cup back and forth, taking small sips for a while. I had no idea what to do next, and I could feel that Keiko was in the same place. We had come no closer to fixing our pain problem, and hadn't discovered anything about our amnesia either. It was frustrating, we just didn't seem to have any way to move forward from here.

Suddenly, the big golden question mark appeared above the woman's head. Only now, I noticed that it hadn't been there all along. With a long sigh, I figured we may as well pick up some «Anneal Blades», since we weren't sure what to do from here. So, we picked up the quest, listening through the woman's speech again. Though I couldn't be sure, it seemed like a word here and there had changed.

When that was done, we trotted out into the woods, past a stream players with elated looks. It was pretty crowded when we arrived, with players eagerly throwing themselves into battle against plant monsters. I'm not sure how to describe them, they seemed to walk with the mass of roots that wriggled around beneath it, with large bulbous lower bodies and long vine-like whips for arms. Its body was long and sinuous, almost like a sort of oddly shaped pitcher, which curved in in the middle. They didn't seem to have any sort of head, since there was just a big gaping hole in the top, with sharp teeth ringing the entire inside. Even with 'little' in their name, they were just about as tall as me. Add on that they had no eyes to speak of, and I could describe them with one word. CREEPY. Just looking at them made my skin crawl. They also had these giant flowers with big petals, kind of drooping forward over their toothy maws.

We moved through the forest, trying to find some monsters not already taken. We would just need to kill two, since each of us would need to get the item. Then we were getting the hell out of here. These things seriously gave me the chills. Finally, with no other players within twenty feet or so, a 『Little Nepent』 POPed nearby. We both rushed forward, slashing into it with simultaneous «Horizontals», jumping away when it would inevitably counter. We didn't know about its attacks or anything, but that should be no problem with our level advantage. Just those two attacks had cut away half of its hp. After it had lashed out with numerous vines, we stepped in again, each using a «Horizontal Arc» to cut straight into the center of its body. The monster shattered and we both cringed momentarily, shaking from the thought of it.

Animal type mobs I could manage. Claws and fangs and large bodies were just indicators of what it was capable of. Plant monsters on the other hand, they were just... ugh...

"Yeah, I know really..." Keiko responded to my thoughts, shaking herself at the same time. After a little more wandering, we found and immediately killed another 『Little Nepent』, immediately heading back to the town as fast as we could without attracting attention. However, when we arrived back at town, a huge line of players ran through the town. We moved to see what the line was for, finding that it actually headed into the quest NPCs house.

We took our spot at the back of the line, which thankfully moved rather quickly, since finishing the quest didn't actually take very long. Strangely, they had apparently all finished the quest shortly before us. Everyone was talking about how suddenly, every mob that spawned had a flower. Keiko and I looked at each other. "Hehe, I guess we help people wherever we go..." she said in a low voice. Our conclusion, that only the 『Little Nepents』 with flowers dropped the quest item, and that since she took the quest, they all spawned with flowers, was quickly confirmed when no one took a place in line behind us. Apparently, her luck of all monsters spawning with the item only extended until she had gotten it, not until she finished the quest, unfortunately.

Still, there were so many people in line that it took a full half hour to finally reach the door. By now, it was almost 8:00 am. We handed over the two «Little Nepent Ovules» and received our swords. Then, we sat back down against the wall, in the same place as before. That was pretty good, we managed to help a few hundred people get an extremely rare sword. Hopefully they would all help more on the next floor when we got there.

That made me wonder, how was the raid group doing? Since we got up so early, they probably hadn't even gathered yet. Probably, some were going on an early morning hunt in preparation, others sleeping in until the meeting time, thinking they would at least like to get a nice rest, since today might be their last. It made me feel a bit guilty. We were so high level, it felt like we were shirking our duty to help them. If we were there, we would surely make a large impact on the battle. But, I still couldn't make myself fight in such a dangerous situation. I wouldn't go in, knowing we were ill prepared. Making stupid decisions like that would only lead us to a quick death.

Probably out of habit, I pulled up my status menu and let my eyes run over my stats. Then, I blinked a few times. "Keiko, we... leveled up." I said slowly. I couldn't remember leveling up. When did that happen? I quickly recalled everything we had killed while Keiko flashed through her menu to look at the same screen. The just those nepents... and the boar! "Oohhh..." I stretched out the word as I realized. That boar was a field boss, so naturally, it was worth a whole lot of exp. After our dungeon rampage, we had earned a massive amount of experience. While not enough to level up, given our current level, it put us within range for taking out a boss to push us up again. Thinking about that, wouldn't it have been much more efficient for us to go and kill those instead of the『Snarlys』 this last month?

Actually, even if it only spawned once in a while, we ran so fast we could travel back and forth between the cities daily, killing both the boar and 『Snarlys』... I, as well as Keiko, who had surely been on the same train of thought, sighed loudly. If we had done that instead, we would surely have reached a much higher level by now, maybe even twenty or twenty-five. Too late for that now though. After thinking for a few seconds, we put a point into STR and two into AGI. That left us at 12 and 39 points. I glanced up into the corner of my vision, checking my new max hp. I had just passed three thousand points.

3018 hp. Surely, that would be enough to survive anything thrown at me on this floor. Even having the 『Great Boar Lord』 trample over me had only done slightly more than six hundred damage. It would take that kind of thing five full times to kill me. Of course, the Floor Boss would be much stronger, so it would be dangerous to fight, even at my level...

Footsteps drew my attention back to the world around me. I looked up to see the NPC woman leave her position at the stove for the first time, without a player doing something to cause it. She walked over to the locked door on the far wall, opening the door. She stepped through, and I shot to my feet before it closed behind her. I caught the door and kept it open as both Keiko and I moved inside.

The NPC woman was already speaking, though not to us. "Agatha. Here, many traveling swordsmen got medicine for you from the forest. If you drink this, you'll get better for sure." Sadly, I knew it was no good. Because the quest was repeatable, there would surely be no change in the little NPC girl's condition. As I crossed into the room to get a look inside, I saw that there was a bed against the right hand wall, a window appearing on the wall just above the headboard. Under the large blanket, a small girl, propped up by her mother's hand as she drank from the small wooden bowl offered to her.

As she drank the medicine down, I could see faint color already coming back to the little NPC girl's cheeks. After she finished, the little girl, Agatha, according to her cursor, looked over at us. Then, she said something that caught us completely off guard.

"Sorry, Onee-chans, I got sick again."

Author's Note: Sorry for the slow release, I've been playing LoL almost nonstop for the last few days.


	46. Chapter 46

**System Maintenance**** Chapter 46**

Author's Note: Haha, the chapter you've been waiting for! Though, I think it'll come as a surprise. :3

Again?

"Wait, what do you mean again?" I asked immediately. Agatha tilted her head and gave me a blank look. Right, an NPC wouldn't understand such a vague question. "Umm, that is, could you tell us what happened on the quest you had us do?"

Agatha nodded, then said in a voice scratchy from coughing, "You took me to a magic spring in a forest that healed my illness, then took me to see the nice Onii-chan who brought me medicine first."

"That was all?" She nodded. Keiko and I exchanged glances. "So, where was the magical spring?"

"In the forest," she answered vaguely. There was one healing spring that came to mind immediately could it be the same one?

After thinking for a moment, I asked, "And who was the Onii-chan we took you to see?"

"His name is Kirito." We would have asked if we could bring her to the healing spring again, but based on how this quest was, she would always get sick again, even if we brought her. So, after we wished her luck getting better, which as an NPC, she didn't understand, and thanked her mother, who didn't even give a response, we left the house.

"Next place to check is the spring then," Keiko noted.

"I'm not so sure about the Onii-chan part though," I pondered. "If he was the first one to bring medicine, it had to be a player. Nothing a player could do would be able to screw up pain dampening, right?"

"I see your point, but let's check it out anyway if the spring clue doesn't pan out. It'll be our only lead at that point." I nodded, and we set off. While we weren't really sure where the spring was, it wouldn't be a problem as long as Keiko led the way. We couldn't sprint all out though, because the forest quickly grew dense as we made the trek uphill. We were forced to wind all though tree trunks, large brush, and rocks as we half-ran. After a pretty long time, considering how short our normal travel time was, we emerged in a vaguely familiar clearing. Only vaguely, because we had only been here a few times before, nearly a month ago. Also because, behind the familiar pack of wolves, was an entirely unfamiliar spring.

The small pond was completely frozen solid. However, before we could inspect the spring, we had to kill off the wolves guarding it. I couldn't be sure if the monsters had gotten weaker, or if we really had such a level advantage that they totally couldn't manage anything. The entire group of ten fell to our blades within a matter of seconds.

Then, we stood before the frozen spring, staring at it with dumbfounded looks. "It... definitely wasn't like that before..." Keiko managed.

"Y,yeah..." Slowly, we stepped out onto the ice, shuffling forward on the glassy surface. "Totally solid," I commented. She nodded and we stopped in the middle, looking around. Despite the strange changes, it was looking like the magical spring info was no good either. Next up was—

**_Falling_**.

Without warning, I felt myself falling. When I looked down, there was nothing. Then I looked up again, to see a hole with a canopy of trees showing, inside a completely blank space. It was so disturbing, I was too stunned to open my mouth and scream. After a few seconds, a swirling darkness wrapped up around us and everything went dark. It cleared after an unknown amount of time, but nothing seemed to have changed. The entire space was blank, even I didn't exist. There was simply nothing.

Did we just die somehow? But, if that was the case, shouldn't the «Nerve Gear» be frying my brain right now? Then, maybe there was a small period of time in limbo, before the server told the equipment to kill you? Then, maybe I was already dead and this was the afterlife...

In that emptiness, I waited for some length of time. I could not begin to imagine how long, as there was nothing to mark time. Maybe a moment, maybe an eternity. But really, what did it matter anyway? Until finally—

"Oh, it's you two again," a deep voice seemed to emanate from everywhere, but create no real sound, as if it was all in my head. Even though as far as I could tell, I didn't even have a head at the moment. "Now what's this? A cheating flag... for moving outside of the map? The location... through the ground. Sounds like a bug, let's see..." Who was this man, who sounded both bored and intrigued at the same time?

"Hmm, it looks like the area suffered from numerous errors... Your character data as well... Really? Eight flags? How did you even..." His voice trailed off and there was silence for some time. "Ok, those are minor, and those are within expectations... Then, the item flag... Let's see... You have eighteen +7 reinforced swords? While that's certainly strange, it isn't a cheat, so the flag is... Oh, you got those already? Hmm... I guess you haven't used them then, I'll just clear that flag for now..."

Items? Using something? Had we picked something up? This was clearly someone with control over the game. Some kind of «Game Master»? However, the only person with control in SAO was... Kayaba Akihiko! The creator of this death game was personally inspecting my character data to sort out bugs? Seriously? How could he personally manage ten thousand players like this?

Then, it occurred to me. He was sorting out bugs and such. Normal players wouldn't have any way to create bugs in the game under normal circumstances. However, we had the strange «Blessed Twins» skill which seemed to attract all sorts of weirdness, as well as our polar luck, which surely ground away at everything around us.

"Wait, how do you even mess up the ethics code? Oh, oops, that one is my fault, but why do you even have that toggled... Let's see... Personal data... What?! Then, login time?" The voice which must have belonged to the madman behind this whole plot stopped his voice for a few seconds, then broke into hysterical laughter.

When he finished, he went on, "How amusing, Rikito Eiji and Keiko... Apparently twins, though not identical... But according to your login time, you were never reverted to your original appearances. Hahaha! I can't believe I gave «Blessed Twins» to two players who aren't actually twins! In that case I'll link the ethics code too... Hmm, which state though... Well, I'll give you a pass here, you probably haven't been able to sleep lately anyway." Amongst everything he had said, the only thing that registered in my mind was, Wait, he _gave_ us the skill? What could that mean? After laughing for a minute, it seemed Kayaba had calmed down again. "Still, seeing how things have worked out so far, I'll leave it be. I don't know if I would be able to untangle you two again myself anyway."

He paused momentarily, releasing a 'hmmm' sound briefly before he spoke again. "That one is fine, but the pain dampening system is... How did you even manage to break that? Hmm, let's see, that function is local, but I can send a system override for it and... done." He seemed to think for a moment before going on. "Actually, I'll keep you on your toes, since you _are_ special after all." That part was very worrying. What was he doing to my character? "Last is your level, 17 already? It's high enough to get a warning for cheating. While that level is understandable for you... I think I'll have to handicap you a bit for all the trouble you've caused so far... So, I'll just overwrite that with the level average, and... done. That should keep you around a bit longer."

After that, he went on as if speaking to himself, "But, I'm going to have to keep an eye on those two, they certainly broke my expectations of that «Unique Skill». I never expected it to progress so far so quickly..." Even though he wasn't talking to me, his words made me want to gulp in anticipation, though I had no throat. "Well, that fixes that problem, now just for the area, even though no one uses it anyway... Oh, and goodbye. Good luck. I expect to see you two become fine adventurers, just, not quite yet." Those words evoked a strange reaction. Something like Deja'vu, but kind of different, passed through my consciousness.

In the time it took me to shake the strange feeling, sweeping darkness had again descended upon me from the void.

The next thing I knew, I felt the prickle of grass on my face.

My eyes fluttered for a moment as I tried to open them, then slowly pushed myself to my knees. Keiko was pushing herself up from the ground at the same time. When I looked around, we were in the middle of the woods.

"W,what the hell just happened?" I stuttered out.

Author's Note: Yeah, I decided to make «Blessed Twins» an actual unique skill, instead of just a rare extra skill given to twins. I think I have an idea in mind for it. Maybe.

Author's Note: Those long messages a pain to format. :(


	47. Chapter 47

**Redo**** Chapter 47**

Author's Note: I'm on a roll today. :D

I stared around in wonder for a few moments, unsure of where or when I was. Middle of the woods. I swiped my menu open quickly. 8:28 am. Just a few minutes since we had made it to the spring. Then, everything that just happened ran through my mind again. Did that really just happen? At the same time, Keiko said the same words I was thinking aloud.

"I don't know, what did he say he'd do again?" I asked, blinking as I tried digging through my memories of his strange, murmured speech for a clue.

"Well, first was... our... items? He mentioned something, no some things that had an error, but it sounded like he didn't do anything with them."

When Keiko was silent for a few moments, I asked, "What items do you think he was talking about?" I pulled open the item menu, but it was so flooded with trash mats, I had no clue what it might be.

"Ummm, then... he went through a few thoughts, but I think he wound up wondering if he should take the «Blessed Twins» skill away. I flipped to that menu, where we still had the skill, safe and sound in our third slot... Wait, we only had three slots again! However, before I could mention this, Keiko went on. "He also mentioned changing some other thing, though he didn't say what. But, it was related to sleeping somehow. And then... changing our avatars maybe?

My hands immediately went to my chest, confirming that he had decided to not change that after all.

"Wait, he also mentioned the pain dampening, it sounded like he reset it for us," mentioned, "although, didn't he also say something about keeping us on our toes? You think he didn't fix it after all?" If that was the case, it would royally suck, since that single thing was what brought us all the way out here to begin with. We had no answer at the moment, so we moved on.

"And... then our levels. He definitely said he was going to change our levels." This time, I hesitated. After changing to the character screen, my finger hesitated over the status option. I exerted strength to push my finger forward, and touched the button. The menu appeared, with our level at the top—

『Level 4』 I nearly fell over when I saw the number. We just lost a full month of grinding. With the five thousand actually pushing to clear the game averaging at level five or so, and the three thousand huddled in the «Starting City» all level one, it averaged out around three and a half. At least he rounded up...

However, just when I was hanging my head in despair, Keiko suddenly called out. "Onii-chan! Look! He messed up, this is actually a really good thing!"

"Huh?" How could getting our levels cut down like this possibly be a good thing? I followed where she was pointing, my eyes coming to rest on our base stats.

『Available Points 0』

『Strength 12』

『Agility 39』

Unable to control myself, I suddenly burst out laughing. He'd changed our level but forgotten to reset our stats. In the end, this would actually just make us stronger. At least, as long as we kept gaining points when we leveled up. If that was the case, we would have an extra thirteen levels worth of points from now on. That was a major difference. The only real issue was our hp, which had been knocked all the way down to 1068 points. That, and our third skill slot, for «Weapon Throwing» was locked again. We would need to reach level twelve again quickly, so we could reequip the skill before it lost too many points, since apparently, unequipped skills slowly lose levels over time.

"Come on, let's get going, if we run back and forth between the cities and kill the boar field boss and the 『Snarlys』, we can level up again in no time," I said quickly. If we were to do that, surely, we would be able to reach our old level soon. We would need to get pretty high again before we could move on to the next floor, since naturally, all the monsters there would all be more difficult.

"Wait, I want to go back and see the spring one more time before we go." There was no real reason to do so, but if Keiko suggested it, I would definitely go along. We wandered through the woods for a few minutes to find it again, and when we moved into the clearing, something surprised us both.

"Heathcliff-san!" I exclaimed. "Hey, what are you doing here? When we had entered, Heathcliff was typing away on a virtual keyboard.

"Ah, well, you see..." he scratched the back of his head for a few moments, then, "I was trying to go to «Horunka», but I seem to have read my map wrong and I can't find the town." He chuckled, adding that he was just messaging a friend and trying to get directions.

"Ah, then we'll bring you back with us, since we'll be passing right through it." After a slight hesitation, he accepted, and we began the walk back to town. At some point on the trip, something suddenly popped into my head.

"Hey, Heathcliff-san, why were you coming to «Horunka»? Shouldn't you be with the Boss Raid group today?" I asked.

"Well, I don't feel my sword is quite strong enough for use in the Boss Raid, so I was coming here to get the «Anneal Blade». I didn't realize that the raid would be scheduled so soon," he explained, following with a sigh. After we made it back to town, we parted ways. We passed through the city quickly and left through the North gate, heading back toward the «Starting City» again. We were would have to grind like crazy to catch up again, but if we could do it efficiently enough, we could probably catch up to the frontlines soon.

Huh, the frontlines... where had I picked up that term again? Somehow, it fit perfectly... A five minute sprint took us back to the «Starting City», though we didn't go inside. Instead, we skirted around the outside, killing any boars with crossed with powerful Sword Skills. Luckily, our lower level didn't affect how much damage we could deal, only how much we could take. So, at a full sprint, we dashed straight around the outer wall of the city, cutting down anything we came across. However, none of the monsters transformed into 『The Great Boar Lord』, leading us to believe it had a much longer POP time than the regular boars.

Once past there, we continued straight on for «Tolbana». When we finally reached the gate, we slowly came to a stop just inside, panting heavily. We had just run almost clear across the first floor. So, we walked into the nearest restaurant, nearly empty given that it was about 10:00 am, and ordered water. Even if it was just simulated, it didn't change the fact that we were incredibly thirsty after that run. While we drank, I checked my sprint skill to see that it was all the way up to 81 points already.

Once we had finished our break, we headed off to hunt again. On our way through the center of the town, I noticed a crowd in the Colosseum. The raid group was getting ready to head out. I still felt the urge to join them, now that our pain issue appeared to be fixed. Of course, I quickly reminded myself that we couldn't because now we were only level 4. Way too low level for a Boss Raid.

With two long sighs, we passed them by and set off for our usual hunting spot. However, Col wasn't our goal this time, exp was. So, the plan wasn't to grind for a few hours and come back before the trash mats durability expired from lying on the ground. This time, we were going to just keep grinding for as long as we could.


	48. Chapter 48

** Grinding Grinding Grinding Chapter 48**

Author's Note: Who's bright idea was it for me to get a red bull? Now I've been up since yesterday and probably won't go to sleep until tomorrow. T-T

Oh, and I finally put a cover for the Fanfic! Because it was pretty much the _only_ one without a picture... Like it? It should look sort of familiar... :3

As we collapsed to the ground again, after the sixteenth round of 『Snarlys』. We'd been at it almost an hour and a half and gained just one level. Normally, this would be the longest we ever hunted without a break, however we had determined that we would reach level 12, and regain our «Weapon Throwing» skill before we left. Of course, that was easier said than done. The experience requirement for each level increased by 4000 experience above the previous level. Since going from level 4 to 5 required 16000 experience, level 6 would require another 20000. At that rate, based on our current experience and the total we would need to reach... After trying futilely to figure out how long this would take, I drew my sword and used it to cut the calculations into a tree. Since most areas in the field weren't «Immortal Objects», the cut I left in the tree would stay, for a while at least. Though I wasn't actually sure if and when it would disappear again.

I had to scratch it all out in longhand, since there was nothing as convenient as a calculator in SAO. It would take a total of 264000 exp to reach level 12. Currently, we had accumulated just 50800 exp. Slowly, I wrote out the calculation, subtracting to find how much was left. Then, I multiplied the number of 『Snarlys』we killed in each five minute period, by 12, the number of five minute periods in an hour, coming up with 240 『Snarlys』each hour. Multiply again by exp to find exp gain per hour. Then came the hard part. I had to divide the total exp we still needed, 213200 points in total, by the 19200 points we earned each hour. Going all the way back to the basics, I did each step, in order. It was a good thing I'd been a good math student.

Finishing my calculations, I found that we would need 11.1 more hours to reach our goal. "Another eleven hours of this..." I wanted to cry at such a number. Considering that we had normally only hunted for between an hour or two, we would be doing almost a week's worth in a single day. By the time we were finished, the Boss Raid would be finished and everyone would have advanced to the second floor already. But, we had set our minds to at least regaining our lost skill, so we would definitely follow through with our task. Two thousand six hundred sixty four boars to go...

Without my noticing, figuring how much longer our task would last took up my whole three minute break, the time it took the twenty 『Snarlys』 to rePOP.

Some number of hours later, at which point I had lost count of how many enemies had fallen to my blade, I flopped back to the ground again. I was panting, because it took a great amount of effort to strike well enough to fell one of the monsters with a single attack. Despite my condition, a thought occurred to me at that moment. It would take us nearly twelve hours in total to gain eight levels. We were earning experience at the rate of a solo, on one of the most efficient hunting spots on the floor, and killing the mobs at a breakneck pace. No wonder why everyone else had taken so long to reach the same point. I imagined, instead of killing a mob taking a single strike, the average coming to about six seconds per enemy. Although, I had to correct myself, since they could not be killed again for five minutes, that changed the kill time to something closer to fifteen seconds per kill.

Most players fought monsters which were considered 'safer' because they had much lower damage potential. However, those mobs would take three, five, sometimes more, attacks to defeat. That probably came out closer to a minute or more per enemy. Add in that the eighty or so experience was then split six ways... In the end, we, aiming to reach level 12 in one day, twelve hours of grinding, would be accomplishing something that would take a normal, safely partied player... I could do this one in my head... Twenty four times longer. Meaning, 288 hours. Even if they hunted for a full eight hours each day, spending a full third of their time hunting, it would take more than a month to do what we wanted done _right now._

Basically, what I was realizing was, our expectations on what could be done were on a whole different level from regular players. How did that happen? Was it all thanks to the strange passive? While that was a part of it, it only accounted for some of the extra points. There was more to it. I couldn't quite throw all the thanks to Keiko's good luck this time, because it wasn't something with chance involved. Maybe it had more to do with our attitudes? Normal players weren't here fighting these particular mobs. While part of it was that it was our hunting ground, where we farmed the materials we sold daily, there should surely be some players who had never bought from us, nor heard of us, who would come here for the high efficiency hunting spot.

Except, none did. It really was just us, day in and day out, for the entire month we had used it. The reason was probably because the 『Snarly』 had high attack power, which dissuaded regular players from trying to kill one. It was certainly because they feared death. However, when I looked at them, they were not at all threatening. Maybe it was because I knew how easy they were to defeat before they could wield that high attack power. But, according to their defensive stats, that should also be common knowledge. So, what could it be?

Death. That was it. The fear of death. It had high attack power. It was a mob that could kill a player. However unlikely, there was the possibility. Even with a level advantage, their attacks could kill a careless player, or one who panicked during a battle.

I didn't even think about dying in battle. Beforehand, I would consider if the potential danger was at an unacceptable level, and only go in if I figured it safe enough. That left me completely free of worry in the midst of a fight. Dying did not even cross my mind. That would explain why we were able to stay calm in a situation that had most players hiding in the «Starting City». Of course, at the very core of my thoughts, the reason for this was clear.

This world was normal.

Even with dying bringing the penalty of death, this world, which was all a game, was really just like the real world. Almost every concept from everyday life was transferable. Work, play, sleep, the three basic things that comprise a day, were all here. The methods were different, the results the same. Others rejected the changes, they did not want to give up their real world. They didn't see that it was the same thing. While others rebelled, we simply accepted the changes to our daily routine.

After all, from the very beginning, we came here to play.

Author's Note: Still a short chapter, but it's mostly just to explain what they're doing to get their skills back and give a look into Rei's head on their situation.


	49. Chapter 49

**The End of _One_ Long Day**** Chapter 49**

"Doooonnnneee!" I moaned out. In the dark of night, forest all around— and nothing else, we finished, the big, now very familiar letters of 『Level Up』hovered above our heads, releasing a small stream of golden particles for a few moments, before slowly becoming transparent until they were gone.

"Now, to get our skill back," I huffed out. Laying on my back and facing the dark canopy above, I opened my skill menu. To my surprise, our «One-handed Sword» had increased many levels, now level 65. However, that was nothing compared to our «Sprint» all the way at 90 now. I tapped the third slot, opening the window of available skills, and without even looking at the others, reequipped the «Weapon Throwing» skill. Thankfully, it did not seem to have lost any levels while we were working to get it back. However, due to our massive grinding session without using it, the skill was now behind our «One-handed Sword» again, still at 46.

Now that I thought about it, I'd asked Argo about skills some time ago. The thing about weapon skills is, they increase based on hitting enemies. Every slash gains points based on how well the attack hits, and the monster's level. Since we had (probably) reached the second floor today, there were higher leveled monsters waiting. Having a higher level would mean that every attack we landed against them would increase our weapon skill levels faster, which would be necessary to combat the increase in points needed for each level, much like the way our experience requirement increased with each level. However, while higher floors would allow us to increase our weapon skills faster, «Sprint» wouldn't receive the same benefits. While I wasn't really sure how it worked,(having not asked Argo) logically, it should level up based on distance ran. That would explain why it was so far ahead now. Not only did we use it to run great distances across the floor, but also during combat.

However, no matter the floor, running is just running. If anything, due to the floors getting smaller the higher we went, we would likely use it less later on. Well, for traveling anyway. So, while monster gave a boost to our weapon skills, it would take longer and longer to increase «Sprint» as time went on. If I looked at it from a basic standpoint, I would say, gaining 100 levels on one floor would mean it would be maxed by floor ten. However, since it was point based, the time taken would likely be many times longer than expected. Of course, if we really wanted to focus on leveling up just the one skill, we could just run back and forth across the entire floor. But, that didn't seem particularly practical at this point. Besides, we used it often enough while fighting, so it would be a waste of time to max it now, when we would still be using it later.

A tap on my shoulder pulled me back to reality. "Onii-chan, let's go. I want to see the new floor."

"Yeah, same here," I responded. We picked our stiff bodies up off the ground and set back off for «Starting City». Being the main city on the first floor, it had the «Teleport Gate» in the central plaza. Unless we wanted to hike all the way through the dungeon, that was the way to reach the next floor. So, another long sprint, halfway across the floor brought us back to where it all started. Again, we were moving backward to go forward. But no matter, once we made it to the second floor, we'd crash for the night.

Moving inside the city boundaries, 『Inner Area』 showed in my vision, as usual. We trotted down the deserted city streets, heading straight for the center of the massive city. Supposedly, it was the biggest city in all of Aincrad, though that had yet to be proven, given the circumstances.

Shortly, we reached the central plaza. The huge area enough to hold the entire population of this death game, all ten thousand players back during the tutorial. Well, not quite ten thousand, I thought with sadly nostalgic feeling. For the me now, it was a bit hard to believe we had actually not heard anything about the SAO incident in the numerous hours following the game's release, and logged in as late as we did. Seriously, what was I thinking back then? I really was clueless, wasn't I?

As we walked right into the center of the city, right underneath the massive decorative fountain, a large structure, five meters high, though nowhere near the size of the fountain behind, was constructed of what looked like many interlocking sheets of metal, forming an arch three meters across. As if contained by the metal, a vague blueish haze hovered between the many folds of metal, filling the air inside.

It was the «Teleport Gate». There was one in the main city on each floor, again, supposedly. Even in the beta, they had not reached any of the higher floors. So, there was a possibility of the trend changing later on. But for now, we would be on our way. Walking forward, we stepped directly into the hazy area beneath the arch. We stood for a few moments, then...

Nothing.

"So, how does this thing actually work?" we both asked at the same time. "Maybe it's activateable," Keiko said. She walked to the side, tapping the metal arch with a finger, the usual way of using something, like a door. However, nothing happened with this.

"So that's not it..." I mumbled. And here I was, just a minute ago thinking about how much I'd learned since coming here. And yet, I was still completely at a loss. I guess some things just never change, I thought with a smirk. "Well, for now, let's find a place to sleep so we can ask someone in the morning.

"But, Onii-chan, we're back in the «Starting City» now. There are no open rooms here."

"Urk, I forgot about that. Well, what about that church we stayed in the other time?" Coming to an agreement, we set off toward the east section of the city. To find the church in the huge place, all we had to do was look up. The tall spire at the top of the church could be seen from most anywhere we went. I checked the time on the way, to see that it was almost midnight. Oh man, I was up way later than usual. While I was completely exhausted from all that grinding, at least I wasn't about to fall over, like the other times we'd found ourselves out too late.

We reached the church, and for courtesy's sake, we knocked. It was a public building, so the door was always open. However, we knew that Sasha and those couple children were living inside, so it would be rude to just walk inside. After a short wait, (considering that it was so late and anyone inside was most likely asleep when we knocked) the door opened, Sasha rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"Huh? Rei? Rai? Why are you guys back? Ah! Here, come inside." She ushered us through the door, closing it again once we were through. She sat us at a small circular table with a little candle in the center while she performed a few steps to make tea. With three mugs, she sat, passing two over to us. We thanked her and she continued on. "Weren't you leaving?"

"What do you mean? We just got here," Keiko responded.

"Huh? But you said you were going to «Horunka» when you left," Sasha came back with a confused look.

"Yeah, that was... how long ago now?" she directed the question at me, but I couldn't even remember how long ago that was now. I could only shrug and shake my head in response.

"That... that was just this morning!" Sasha exclaimed, though she kept her voice down. When we heard that, we did full spittakes, coughing on the tea afterward.

After a few moments, I managed to clear my throat enough to speak. "Seriously? That was just this morning?!"

"Of course it was! What were you doing that made it seem like anything but?"

"Well..." after my mind traced backward along our crazy day, I recalled, "after we left, we trained those new players to use sword skills and helped Thinker-san start up his group. Then, we saved a player from a giant monster. Then we went to «Horunka», we walked all around town, trying to dig up some clues as to what we were looking for. Then... we did the «Anneal Blade» quest... And then... we talked to Agatha-san, and found out that we had to investigate a magical spring, which turned out to be the same spring the giant demon wolf was guarding..." As I spoke, I watched Sasha's jaw fall further and further toward the table. "So we went there, but... well... I don't think she'd believe the next part even if we told her," I directed the last bit to Keiko.

"Yeah, I'm not even sure if we should tell Argo-san about that..."

"Uh huh, I see your point... Meeting _him_ isn't exactly something most people would want to claim... Well anyway, after that, we went to «Tolbana» and grinded for twelve and a half hours against strong monsters so we could regain- I mean, umm... How do I explain this part?" speaking to Keiko quietly.

"So, we had to... err... train some more, because of some... stuff..." she tried to explain awkwardly. By now, Sasha's face didn't seem able to convey any sort of emotion anymore.

"Well, after that, we came back here to go to the second floor before, but we couldn't figure out how to use the «Teleport Gate». So... we decided to come back here for the night. That's everything we did... yeah, today. Huh, we really had a busy day, didn't we?" I asked, though I didn't really expect an answer.

"So... you're telling me you crossed the entire floor, twice, started and finished the most difficult quest there is, went on some shady search through the woods, and had a twelve hour grind session. In. One. Day."

"Yup," we both said at the same time.

"Ok, now what did you really do today? Fall asleep somewhere and not enough money for another night at the inn?" Her tone was serious. She had really changed her opinion of us based on our story. And not for the better. It really was too unbelievable for a normal person to believe.

"Uwaa! We're telling the truth!" I exclaimed, waving my arms frantically.

"Mmmm..." She stared at me, my head still covered by my dark hood. "Do you have any proof that you guys aren't just level 1 beggars who couldn't even make the rent?" Wow, she really didn't care for the players who were staying here, refusing to help clear the game. But then again, wasn't she one of them?

"Hey, I just wondered something. Why don't you like the players staying in the «Starting City» if you're one of them?" Her eyes flashed dangerously at my words, the dagger at her waist coming up to point at me. Since we were in a city, the motion was just for show. Besides, there was no one crazy enough to actually hurt someone else when they could actually die from it.

Surprised my my lack of a reaction, Sasha lowered her dagger. "I'm not like them. I was going to work to clear this game too. I'm even a pretty decent level. But, just a few days ago, I found a really young player wandering in the fields, looking for his parents he said. I took him in and we stayed in an inn room for a few days, but it was too expensive without me going out to hunt to pay for the room. So we came here. We only have to pay a few Col each day for the extra rooms to be available, so we can get by. Every day, we've been going around the city gathering all the little kids who were trapped here..." At that point, she just trailed off, as if she wasn't sure what else she could say.

Her depressed look lasted for a few moments longer, as we sat too stunned by her story to say anything. "H,hey! You just said that to distract me!" she growled. "But I won't fall for it!" If you were really on some sort of journey, you would have to be a higher level. What level are you?" she demanded.

As my mouth opened, the math ran through my flustered mind, without realizing the errors in my logic. Level sixteen, gained eight levels today, "Twent-ouch," I gasped as Keiko elbowed me in the side. Sasha's eyebrow went up. "W,what I meant was, we're level twelve."

"..." She looked at us for a few more seconds. Maybe it was because we were trying to stay two days in a row, or because we had woken her up so late at night, but she seemed a lot less willing to believe us today. "Do you two not realize how hard you are to believe?" We blinked at that question.

"No... that's what I was just wondering about, you just let us stay yesterday, almost without a question."

"Well, yesterday you brought one of my kids back. That enough to let you stay for the night. However, when you come back for a second night, it makes it seem like you're trying to get over on me. Even more so when you tell me some outlandish tale of what you did today."

"But we're telling the truth!" I pleaded with the young woman.

She let out a long sigh. "Ok, please tell me that you realize this is suspicious. Two strange people with big hooded cloaks show up and tell a crazy of what they did in one day, which should take anyone several weeks to complete. Then they claim to be level 12, though the absolute strongest players are just beginning to reach level 10."

"Now that you put it that way..." Keiko mumbled.

"But, but, what's that expression..." I searched my memory which was slowly becoming hazy from tiredness, coming up with "it was, 'truth is stranger than fiction.' What I mean is that it's so strange, why would we make it up?"

Sasha sighed again. "I see your point. Can you just show me your stats? Then I can see for myself whether you are telling the truth or not. I almost said ok immediately. I didn't care about people seeing my stats. But right as I opened my mouth, something popped to the front my mind. Out stats were bugged from Kayaba playing around with our character data earlier.

I mean, we were level 12, with 12 STR, 39 AGI, and 36 unspent points. Anyone who saw our stats would definitely think we were cheating or something.

Then again, we pretty much of _were_ cheating or something. But that was because Kayaba was lazy! Or inattentive, or something...

So, instead of the 'sure why not,' that was about to come out of my mouth, it came out more like, "W,w,w,w,w,what? O,o,o,o,our s,s,s,s,s,stats,s,s,s!?" I could feel sweat starting to run down my face already. Just as I was about to say we would go find somewhere else to stay, Keiko opened her menu, which would still be visible to others, and pulled up her stats before I noticed. "Hiii!" I squealed as Sasha's eyes bugged out the moment she saw the screen.

I lunged over, tackling Keiko from her chair, her menu disappearing as her arms flailed wildly. But, it was too late. Lying on the floor, I turned my head around to see Sasha standing over us. "You two, are you cheaters?"

She said it!

"No!" we both gasped out. "Well, maybe kind of, but not on purpose!" It was all because of that magical frozen spring in the woods!"

"..."

"Ehhh..." at her glare, I realized I'd said something even more suspicious. "Please don't tell anyone! If you don't we'll..." I was grasping at straws here,

"We'll let you meet Argo-san!" Keiko and I shouted the first thing that came to mind. Except it came from Keiko's mind, not mine.

"..." Sasha looked down for a few moments, the light reflecting off her glasses and hiding her eyes. "...That will be fine..." then, she turned and walked into an adjacent room. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving the two of us still lying on the floor.

"Did that really just work?" I whispered to Keiko, feeling that if I spoke any louder, something bad would happen. So, we quietly moved into another spare room, with no one inside. We quickly went to sleep, tired as we were.

We'd just have to deal with our forced promise tomorrow... somehow...

Author's Note: Whew, I managed to get this chapter finished. I may not update for a bit, since I'll be busy for the next couple days. I'll do what I can. : )


	50. Chapter 50

**Early Morning Extortion Chapter 50**

Author's Note: I made it through those hectic days and bought myself a gallon of ice cream as a reward! Now I'm going to eat (some of!) it while I watch the next episode of SAO! ^_^

I'll write the next chapter after, I swear! XP

It was my first time sleeping in three days, and it was _wonderful_. All too soon, my blaring alarm which was impossible to ignore because the sound was forced directly into my brain, sent me flailing around until I managed to silence the thing. "Ugh," I grumbled, pushing myself up from the cold, stone floor. I staggered to my feet, Keiko yawning and stretching as well. We slowly made our way to the door and pushed out into the main room. That's right, we slept in the church with Sasha again last night, I reminded myself.

"Good morning," we both said automatically when we saw people in the next room. They seemed to be eating or something. I had to rub the sleep from with my left hand to get a clearer look, since Keiko was hanging on my right elbow. When I moved my hand away again, there were five pairs of eyes staring at me. "Uhh..." the sound slipped from my mouth uncertainly.

"Who are you?" Sasha said with a purely confused look. "A,and why are you here?"

"But, it's us-" I stared before one of the two small boys interrupted me.

"Who're the pretty naked girls?" he said, waving a pointing finger at us. In a moment, the little girl next to him grabbed him and they struggled as she tried to cover his eyes. Pretty... naked... girls... the words worked their way through my sluggish consciousness for a few moments, before it finally clicked. After going all red up and down, I shot back into the other room, dragging the quickly waking Keiko with me.

"Oh man, I don't remember getting undressed last night. I must have been really tired," I grumbled to myself while quickly throwing my clothes and equipment back on. At least we'd still had our underwear on. Keiko, who had finally come to her senses, was doing the same. After a few moments to dress ourselves as usual, that is, with our cloaks, full armor, and weapons we stepped back into the main room.

This time, Sasha, gasped, pointing at us and shouting, "You two!?"

"Ah, sorry about that. We were really tired and forgot that we got undressed last night," I tried laughing it off.

"Y,yeah, I just didn't expect that the two hooded strangers were such beautiful young girls. A,are you sure you two are even old enough to go out in the field?" That's right, Sasha had been searching for children trapped in this death game. The oldest among the ones I saw seemed to be twelve. We were only fourteen ourselves, hardly older than the children she was sheltering.

However, Keiko refuted her claim before I had the chance. "No no, we're all right. Like we said earlier, we're actually really strong!"

"Why do you wear those creepy cloaks?" one of the little boys asked, a different one from before. "You're so pretty."

"That's exactly why we wear them, we attract too much attention otherwise," I responded this time. That seemed to quiet the children down. However, the silence left afterward was tense, and stretched out as no one seemed sure what to say.

"Well, I guess we'll be-"

"Not so fast!" Sasha's hand shot up to point accusingly at us again. "What about your promise?" Crap, I was hoping to get out of here before she remember that. Of course, now that I thought about it, we could have ran outside before while she still didn't recognize us...

I took a deep breath to keep from smacking myself in the forehead. Now that I had gotten some sleep, I was thinking more clearly, and I could come up with an alternative. She liked Argo and wanted to meet her. What did Sasha care about more? The obvious answer stared me in the face while I thought, her children. They needed money to stay here each night, so maybe...

"I,instead of that, maybe we could offer a donation? With it, you could keep a roof over you and the childrens' heads..." I suggested. Sasha's face went through a range of emotions while she considered my offer. She bounced all around, from hopeful, to disappointed, to angry. I couldn't even tell what some of her faces meant. After a few minutes of thinking, she let out a long sigh.

"For something like that, you'll have to offer a lot of Col. How much do you have? Her eyes narrowed at us. Surely, she didn't intend to make us pay everything we had?! Even getting her a meeting with Argo would be cheaper.

"Currently..." I pulled open my menu, reading off our total Col honestly. I didn't want to lie to someone with such dangerous information on us. "Three hundred forty-six thousand Col." In unison, all jaws in the room hit the floor.

"Y,you're lying. Let me see that!" Since my window was still visible to others, I turned it around and pushed the window over to her. I really needed to make it invisible to others again, now that we had something to hide... Sasha glared hard at the window for a few moments, her eyes reading the numbers a few times, as if she couldn't believe them. "W,with that much money, we could live here, including lodging, clothing, and food... indefinitely..." Sasha stammered in a low voice.

"Please, don't demand all our money, or we'll take you to see Argo-san instead. Even that would cost less!" I exclaimed. Truth-be-told, I didn't really want to take her to see Argo, or we would wind up having to tell Argo about our even more unbelievable story. Though, we might wind up telling her anyway when she got wind that our levels had miraculously gone down. To avoid that, we would need to drop even farther off of everyone's radar than we already were...

"T,then... ten thousand. That's enough for three months," Sasha said with a resolute look. Only ten? I was expecting a demand closer to fifty or one hundred thousand. I nodded and opened a trade, transferring the money quickly.

I cracked a grin, "Most expensive lodging on the first floor, five thousand Col per night." Getting my point, Sasha's lips spread into a wry smile as well.

"Unbelievable charges for unbelievable people."

I chuckled, before asking, "So, about last night..."

"My lips are sealed," she assured us. I nodded, but before I could turn to leave, Keiko stepped forward.

"Sasha-san, if you ever need any more help, send us a message," she offered, while sending Sasha a friend request. Confused looks spread across Sasha and my faces at the same time. She had just extorted ten thousand Col from us, and now we were offering to become her friend. Then again, the relationship was rather similar to our deal with Argo. After a few moments, Sasha accepted.

"Don't regret it," she grinned again.

"We'll have to see about that," I shot back. Why did this always happen to us? We always wound up in a strange situation with people. Argo, the black-haired kid, Klein somewhat, and now Sasha too. The only person we really knew who we had a truly amiable relationship with was Diabel. I sighed inwardly. Was this going to become a pattern?

After we said our goodbyes and left the church, we headed toward the center of town. Toward the «Teleport Gate». As we moved at a leisurely stroll, my mind wandered. While we had formed another weird friendship, at least Sasha's intentions were good. That ten thousand Col was probably the most noble investment we had made since this all started. I think it even beat out the «Merchant's Carpet» which had allowed us to sell all those trash mats to other players. Like people always said was important, we were literally investing in the childrens' futures. As long as they could stay in the church with Sasha, they would be fine. Who knows what would have happened when she couldn't afford to keep housing them? So, even if she called on us again some day, it would definitely be worth whatever she asked of us, since it would go toward those children.

As I reached the end of that train of thought, we came near the entrance of the central plaza. Like most of the city, it was moderately crowded, though there were many more players with the appearance of actual _players_ as opposed to all the squatters who were just going to wait this whole thing out. Most were like us, moving toward the «Teleport Gate» standing near the fountain. Even from a distance, I could see numerous people stepping inside and vanishing in a blue light. Much more infrequently, a light would appear, with a player materializing from it. So, there were some players coming back down from the second floor as well.

After we approached the gate, still without the slightest idea of how to actually use it, we simply stood nearby and listened to one player explain to his friend. Apparently, when the next floor opened, a new option in the floor map appeared, to choose which floor's map we wanted to look at. Since we hadn't so much as stepped foot on the second floor, the whole map was blank, except for one dot, labeled «Urbus». That was the city we could teleport to. As the man went on, we learned that all we needed to do was stand near the gate, moving inside wasn't even necessary, and say 'Teleport,' and the city we wanted to go to. That would be, 'teleport: Urbus.'

"So it's voice controlled," Keiko muttered.

"Yeah, I didn't think of that last night," I added to her thought. The players we had been listening to stepped into the gate, calling out the teleport command as the one had just explained, and vanished.

"Well, time to get going." Keiko nodded.

"This time, we'll definitely help clear the dungeon!" she raised her fist.

I chuckled hesitantly, "I'm not so sure if that's a good idea..." but she ignored my protests as we stepped into the gate ourselves. With one more glance at each other, we recited the command together.

"Teleport: «Urbus»!"

Author's Note: First Floor: Finished! Exactly fifty chapters! Think you can stick with me for the next three thousand seven hundred? (I honestly hope it doesn't last _that_ long...)

O_o


	51. Chapter 51

**Moving On Up**** Chapter 51**

Looking around once we appeared in the new environment, the first thing I noticed was the difference in the «Teleport Gate» here. While the same structure on the first floor was constructed with interlocking metal sheets, this one was made entirely from brown stones. They were perfect squares, maybe as thick as my forearm each, piled one on top of the other in a fashion that curved inward until the two sides came together at a point. There were many more players around now, since we had woken up later than usual, about 8:30 am currently. Everyone was dressed about the same as on the first floor, since they hadn't had much time to actually grind and level up to buy the new equipment available on this floor.

Unlike the players, the NPCs roaming the streets (easily identifiable due to their lack of weapons and armor) were noticeably different than their first floor counterparts. Their skin was a few shades darker, more tanned looking, and their clothing was lighter. It probably had to do with the floor's hotter climate, which was nice since we were getting into Winter.

After we looked around for a few minutes, buying a floor map from the information NPC while we were at it, we set to the next obvious task: Keep training. We had to gain more levels and get stronger again before fighting the next boss and moving up again. This would be our first time repeating the cycle. Eventually, all the cycles of train, fight boss, train, fight boss, might blend together, but for now, it was kind of like we were back where we started. It was almost a depressing thought, except for one thing. We were one step closer to our ultimate goal. We had successfully cleared 1% of this Death Game. Just ninety-nine floors to go.

To start out, we asked a random guy where we could train our «Weapon Throwing» skill. He pointed us to an area with flying wasps not too far from the city. After thanking him, we set off. As we ran toward the next area, we gazed around to take in the new scenery. The main town «Urbus» sat in the center of a strangely shaped mountain. High walls curved steeply upward in a complete circle around the town. It gave the area a 'bottom of a crater' feeling. However, while made our way through the city, we found that the steep sides did not actually extend to the ground, but stopped a few meters above our heads. The flat rock overhead tranformed the area from a crater to a cave. Well, an overhang at least, since it wasn't very far to the gate.

After we had moved through the gate, which was little more than a rectangular hole in the wall, we found that it was more tunnel than a gate. The tunnel went on for a dozen meters or so, probably the whole distance through the outer wall around the town. The long tunnel was the reason why there was such a short overhang after that long curving inside wall, I realized. Still at a walking pace, since their were numerous other players traveling the path as well, it took a few minutes to reach the end of the tunnel. Once outside, the land... didn't actually open up around us. I'd been expecting plains or something outside all those mountainous walls and caves, but instead, more high cliffs shot up all around. Basically, this floor was a big mountainous region.

I brought up the floor map, taking it out in a physical form for convenience, and checked the area. Because of the high walls blocking much of the terrain, there were clearly marked paths going to each of the three smaller towns on the floor. If we followed the path we were on past the hunting grounds which was our target, we would reach a town called «Durn». I looked up from the map, scanning the floor above to see which direction the next dungeon was, but couldn't find the spire leading to the next floor. It must be hidden behind these mountains somewhere, I figured.

There was a section of open area directly around the outer wall of the city, which split into numerous paths, heading in all directions. As I checked the map again, I figured we were heading toward the Western end of the floor. We continued on at the agonizingly slow walk, since we never wanted to draw attention by sprinting when other players were around. However, it was immediately obvious that there were too many to get away from. We could see other players moving up the path we were heading toward. That's to say, we would either have to let them see us running, or walk the whole way.

"What do you think, Keiko? Run or walk?" I asked Keiko in a low voice. I honestly wasn't sure which I would prefer at this point.

"I say run, we have our cloaks on, so no one knows who we are, and we need to keep running to keep «Sprint» leveling up. Yeah, that hadn't occurred to me. Disregarding any other players, we had to keep using our «Sprint» skill if we ever wanted to max it. As I'd realized before, it would only get harder and take longer as its level continued to increase, since it wouldn't gain bonus points the way our weapon skills would. I nodded.

We each took a deep breath, as our ability allowed us to run faster and faster, it had become more tiring. I still wasn't sure if increasing our STR would help with that, or if it was just a basic fatigue sort of thing. So, after a moment of preparation, we dug our feet into the ground, kicking off hard and increasing our speed many times over, much to the surprise to everyone nearby. While there were players around, they weren't packed together or anything, so we had no trouble weaving steadily to pass them by. The amazed stares on our backs didn't last very long, since we were soon engulfed in the high cliff walls that stretched in every direction.

In the narrow pass, there were no monsters to block our way, so we continued on at our seemingly reckless pace, tearing past any hapless players so fast they hardly had time to jump in surprise. After a couple minutes of winding through the cliffs, the area opened up a bit, some rugged trees actually growing from the cracked earth. As we slowed again, our pace dropping to a regular jog, then a complete stop, we scanned the area. I could see a number of large hornet monsters flying high in the air. A perfect mob to train our «Weapon Throwing» against, since we needed to bring it back up alongside our «One-handed Sword» again. While they would surely be a pain to fight regularly, thrown weapons would turn these into little more than free kills.

A swish, then the sound of an explosion, suddenly alerted us that we weren't the only ones here. We circled around the area, getting a clear view past the trees, to find a head of long, auburn hair in the clearing. Her hair was nearly as long as our own, I noticed. My brain took a few more moments to process the much more obvious thing in this situation. This was the first girl we had seen actually fighting to clear the game. Well, besides that cloaked girl anyway. As she turned to fight another wasp, coincidentally facing in our direction, I finally got a good look at her.

Clear, smooth skin, a round face with big, golden colored eyes. Her beauty was simply stunning. Actually, now that I thought about it, she looked almost just like us, except for the color of her hair and armor. She was dressed in mainly red and white. A red shirt, a small breastplate which seemed to be the lightest one could find in a light off-white color. Then, white pants tucked into dark red knee-high boots. With just a single piece of armor and a rapier in hand, her eyes moved from her next target to us, standing rooted in place.

"..." Several seconds of silence.

"Wait, it's you two!" the girl suddenly exclaimed. She knew us? Even our cloaked selves were moderately well known, since everyone knew us as 'those crazy trash mat venders', or something like that, since we always kept the cloaks on while we sold our wares. Of course, if that was what she was referring to, she probably thought we were here to monopolize this hunting spot.

Following that train of thought, the first words out of my mouth were, "We're not here to take all the PoPs, we'll leave enough for you too!" while I waved my hands frantically to try and dispel her worry.

"Huh?" was her only reaction. Another awkward silence followed, while we weren't sure exactly where we stood with this person. For us, it was definitely our first meeting. If it wasn't through our shop, how did she know us? Suddenly, the girl, maybe a bit older than us, but not by much, looked around in a fluster. Her cheeks had suddenly turned red as her hands flailed around a bit. "Ah, you probably don't recognize me, I took it off because it's stuffy in the hot weather on this floor," she rambled while quickly operating her menu. In a moment, a large cloak appeared around her, suddenly taking her from 'beautiful girl' to 'mysterious hooded person'. Of course, now we both recognized her immediately.

"You- you're that hooded girl from the dungeon!" we both exclaimed in unison, "the one who helped us in the Boss Room." After she nodded, I started walking closer. "Hehe, I never thought you would be so pretty. It's a kind of strange coincidence, I guess." I spoke while moving closer and pulling up my menu. A suspicious look crossed her face while I moved closer.

Then, I tapped the button to unequip my cloak, and surprise replaced the look immediately. I grinned momentarily, saying, "we really do look similar to you, don't we?" In another moment, the beautiful girl's finger moved over her menu again and her cloak disappeared. Keiko, uncloaked as well, stopped at my left side.

The older girl had auburn hair, while our was blond. And her height was a few centimeters taller, her build a little more substantial. Her skin was a bit darker, a little more pink, a little less yellow. While we were different, the similarities were definitely noticeable. The set of her eyes, colored close to ours as well. The round shape of her face and curve of her jaw was definitely the most noticeable indicator. It was the kind of similarity that gave away siblings, or parents and children.

It may have been due to the difference in armor, or more likely, because these were actually avatars, but unfortunately, our bust was larger than hers, despite the apparent age difference. I frowned at that.

As we all stood examining each other, a sudden sound made everyone jump. We all spun to look, finding a party of three men, definitely older than the norm. They had to be in their thirties, staring at the three of us with looks of complete shock. In just a moment, all our cloaks had appeared again, fluttering to the ground around each of us, while we all fell into defensive stances out of instinct.

The men all backed up a step at our hostile appearances, before slowly edging around the grove we stood in, advancing out the other side and continuing toward the next town. When they had all vanished around the next winding turn in the valley, we all relaxed.

"So, anyway..." I started, but was unsure of what I actually wanted to say, "umm... that is... about your help earlier... thanks..." At least I managed to make a coherent statement by the end. She nodded, then after looking at our cloaked forms for a few more seconds, she turned back toward her prey, who thankfully hadn't attacked while we were distracted. "Umm, so, you wouldn't mind if we also hunt here, right?"

After a few moments, she answered, "That will be fine," without turning to look at us. Since we had received permission from the player already in the hunting spot, our worries were eased. We would still need to be careful to leave enough for her to hunt as well though.

With that in mind, we got to hunting.

Author's Note: OMG over 100 reviews. SO MUCH HAPPINESS! ^_^

Argh, I reached the 50 doc limit and had to delete the first chapters from that area to upload this to the site. T-T


	52. Chapter 52

**Mid-morning Hunt**** Chapter 52**

Our goal in this hunt was simple, bring our «Weapon Throwing» skill back to an equal level with our «One-handed Sword». Of course, gaining that many levels for the first skill had taken a massive twelve hour grind. So, it was fortunate that «Weapon Throwing» gained levels faster, or we would have to go through the same thing all over again. There was also the possibility of running out of throwing needles, though that would take really long time considering the stupidly huge amount we carried all the time. Although, thinking about running out made me nervous for a moment and I pulled up my menu to check that we had enough.

Fifty-two thousand seven hundred eighty three.

"..."

I stared at the number for a few seconds. Then, I chuckled slightly, thinking, good thing they don't weigh anything...

When Keiko finished the mob she was fighting, she looked over to see what I was wondering about. I said, "Keiko, when did we buy all these?" I honestly could not remember buying _that_ many.

After glancing at the number herself, Keiko answered, "Huh... maybe the 『Snarlys』 dropped them?"

"That might be it..." I said slowly. Since we bought some for the first time, I don't think we'd ever gone back to buy more, we just always had more when we restocked all our needle pouches... Shaking off that thought, we returned to our original pace.

Of course, we killed many more than the other girl just because we had throwing weapons and didn't have to wait ten or twenty seconds for the hornets to finally swoop in for an attack. So, we cleared a large section of the field while leaving four or five at any given time so the girl sharing the hunting spot would never find herself without a target.

However, during the pauses where we waited for some more 『Wind Wasps』 to PoP, I watched the strange girl's fighting style. It was... well, as strange as the girl herself. She would stand stock still while the monster lunged for an attack, and at the very last moment, shift slightly out of the way so the attacks grazed past by the closest of margins. Then, she would deliver a single stab with her rapier into the center of the wasp's abdomen to kill it. Both her method of dodging and her attacks, which flew so fast my eyes couldn't follow the actual blade, made me think she was one of the incredibly skilled beta testers. Like that black-haired boy.

However, after watching for a while, it noticed that she only used that single Sword Skill. It was the same stab, over and over, every time. That was probably why she could deliver it with such incredible power. Of course, that shouldn't have been enough for one-hit kills on these mobs. They had much more balanced stats than the mobs we used to hunt, as well as simply being a higher level. That meant, instead of taking just six needles to kill, they took ten. Of course, this could also be considered a good thing, since every hit gained us points to our «Weapon Throwing» skill. The more hits they took to kill, the more hits we could land before we had to wait for them to rePoP.

Seriously, with the way we fought, the majority of our hunting time wound up with us waiting for the enemies to PoP again. Back at our old hunting ground, we killed all the mobs in one minute, and waited for four minutes for the first monster to spawn again. If there were continuously more to fight, we could have cleared that twelve hour grind in just two and a half hours or so. These wasps were about the same. While there were more, probably about forty in the field, they took closer to seven minutes to rePoP. Since they took longer to kill, but had a longer spawn time, our down time wound up being about the same. At least they were higher level...

After an hour or so, the girl left, intending to move to the next town and search for new quests to complete. When she asked what we would do, we answered that we still needed to kill more wasps. We said a quick farewell before returning to the regular grind. Every once in a while, we would check our skills to see how much closer we had come to our goal, level 65. At once point, when we finished killing another bunch of 『Wind Wasps』 a light shot up above us, saying we had gained a level.

Finally, while I sat with my back against one of the gnarled trees, Keiko checked our skills to find that we had reached our goal. I pulled open my menu as well and brought up the skills list with a couple quick taps. Operating my menu had become so second nature already, I did it with my eyes closed. Of course, I couldn't actually see the number I was looking for, so I opened my eyes and looked down at the menu displayed in front of me. As she had said, our two weapon skill levels were even again.

I let out a contented sigh, then switched over to the character menu, opening up the other skill section, where it would show the details of skills. I tapped 『Weapon Throwing』 to see if we had unlocked any new abilities, to find that we actually had. Under 『Three Weapon Throw』, there was now 『Five Weapon Throw』. I pulled five needles from a pouch at the same time, holding them between each of my fingers. I held them up a little further back than my cheek, similar to the position to throw a baseball, and felt the Skill activate immediately. My hand shot out in a perfectly familiar motion, all five needles embedding themselves in a nearby tree.

"Looks like our Weapon Throwing just got a nice boost in power," I noted, to which Keiko nodded happily. With my menu still open, I checked my stats. As expected, we were now level 13, now with 39 spare points to spend, though I still wasn't sure if we should use them, since they were points we weren't really a high enough level to have. We already had stats higher than our current level would give, so even without doing so, we were already kind of cheating... Except we had no control over that, if Kayaba had reset our levels properly, then it wouldn't be a concern. I grumbled at the small screen momentarily before returning to the main menu. We had only just reached the next level anyway, so it would take some time to gain another. I checked the clock to see how much time we had eaten up with this grind, happy to see that it had only taken about two hours, since the time was currently 10:42 am. It was still quite early, so we sat for a few minutes wondering what to do.

"Well, back to our regular routine I guess?" Keiko said suddenly. When I gave a confused 'huh?' she pointed over at the pile of trash mats we'd pushed up against a nearby tree out of pure habit.

"Hehehe, well that works I guess."


	53. Chapter 53

**In Pursuit of a Powerful New Skill**** Chapter 53**

Author's Note: Arg, I didn't see that it takes Asuna 2 hits to kill the wasps. Oh well, it doesn't matter that much anyway.

Selling the trash mats didn't go very well that night. It seemed that no one really wanted them for some reason. They were probably good for upgrading an unpopular weapon type or something, so after selling just a few stingers and mandibles to players, we just dumped the rest for super cheap at an NPC shop. We spent the rest of the day hours exploring the crater-like town, going into all the open houses and taking any around town quests we found. We built up a decent list of hunting quests as well, but we would leave that for later when we could buy some info on the targets. When the sun was closing in on the horizon and the town had once again come alive with the many players now swarming through its narrow streets, we sent a message to Argo about meeting up, but she said she was busy. So, we wandered aimlessly for a few hours before finding an inn and settling in for the night. Overall, a nice, normal day.

The following day, we shot back over to the same hunting ground as before, since it seemed to be rather efficient, although we had no point of reference with other mobs on the floor. But, we went anyway. If nothing else, it wasn't crowded, as many hunting spots this close to the main city were sure to be. After scaring the hell out of a bunch more players by tearing past sprinting, we arrived at the small field, with its stubby yellow grass and gnarled trees. Can't say I liked this floor's scenery that much...

Although, to our surprise, the same girl from yesterday was there again. As we entered the area, a wasp swooped in for an attack, which she dodged dangerously, then struck it down with a single blow.

"Wow, how do you kill mobs with so much hp with one attack?" I asked to draw her attention. Though, I was curious about it as well. After her initial whiplash reaction at my call, she stood for a few moments to figure out what I'd asked, and finally answered.

"I get a critical hit." My eyebrow went up on its own when she said something I didn't understand.

"Critical hit?" I said as a question. How had I not heard of something like that yet?"

"It means I hit them in their weak spot, so my attack does four times more damage than normal," she explained. Wow, that was a big difference in damage, I was thinking, before she went on. "For these wasps, the weak point is really hard to hit. If you look closely, there is a black dot in the center of their abdomen a couple centimeters across. That's the weak spot."

"A..."

"Few centimeters?" Keiko finished my sentence. Of course we received a weird look from the chestnut-haired girl for the our twin...ness... but we were still surprised about the wasp thing.

"So, Onii-chan, want to try?" Keiko asked with a smile.

The rapier-user muttered something, before saying, "Then how about a bet? One thousand Col if you can land a critical hit in the next hour."

"Sure, but how do we know if we succeed?" I asked. One thousand Col was pocket change at this point. Argo charged more than that for a lot of stuff. Hell, even the info on her whiskers, which she had gotten from attempting the quest for the extra skill «Martial Arts» on the other side of the floor had cost more than that.

"Oh, you'll know when you land a critical hit. The difference in damage is huge, so it will probably kill the monster you attack immediately. Anyway, what weapon will you use? I'll tell you now, maces and such are really bad at landing critical hits." That's right, we only used throwing needles yesterday, so there's no way she would know what our melee weapon is, I realized.

"We have one-handed swords," Keiko explained, drawing hers to show it.

"Ok then, they're pretty much normal when it comes to getting critical hits. Well, good luck."

"Wait, but why don't we just use our throwing needles? Will they not work?" I asked.

The girl turned back in our direction, answering, "I'm not so sure about them, since they're thrown, I don't know if it works the same way. So, throwing weapons are out of bounds."

"Ah..." we both mumbled together. We'll definitely ask Argo about that later... With that, we all got to hunting. Over the next hour, we moved into the flying monster's aggro range and waited impatiently until they finally dove at us, before dodging and launching a counter attack. It was painfully slow compared to the rate we were killing them earlier. It took ten, maybe twenty times longer to kill each wasp. We didn't even come close to exhausting the field's rePoP rate.

Of course, there was one exception to the normal grinding. That was the first wasp we targeted. When it dove, instead of dodgeing first, I tried a preemptive attack before it could make its move. While my sword skill landed, it did not kill the enemy, and the brief delay stopped me from responding in time to avoid its attack. It drove it's stinger into my stomach, the armor on my chest, and my whole body locked up. To my surprise, the attack hurt. Not like before, in that it was an overwhelming, crippling pain, but it still hurt.

The way it hurt was hard to describe though. It felt like I'd just been stabbed in the chest, but it didn't hurt as much as if I'd been stabbed in the chest. It was kind of like I felt exactly what happened, just dulled down just enough that it wouldn't make me collapse and roll around on the ground in agony.

Keiko dove in, cutting the wasp down before it could attack again, and the stunning effect of its sting wore off a few seconds later. The actual damage was minor, but it was a surprise. Apparently, Kayaba hadn't totally fixed the pain problem, but made it so it wouldn't keep us from fighting at least. That must be what he meant when he talked about 'keeping us on our toes.' It was true enough. While it wasn't like before, it really, seriously hurt. That kind of pain was definitely enough to make us avoid it whenever possible.

Of course, after that little surprise, and a cheap health potion to recover the bit of hp I'd lost, we went on. However, neither of us could manage to land a critical hit in an hour and wound up losing the bet. We handed over the thousand Col, but went on training anyway. The girl stuck around as well, leveling up soon after. We congratulated her, then went on grinding. We still weren't even vaguely closing in on the next level. In our whole hour here, we had hardly killed fifty wasps. We had taken out that many in just ten minutes the day before. At this rate, the exp efficiency plummeted. No wonder why no one else used it. Flying mobs were a pain.

Then again, why was this rapier-user here? I wasn't sure if I should ask such a question. It was rather intrusive, as well as rude. I sent the thought over to Keiko, whether I should ask about it or not. It took her a few minutes of puzzling through the emotions I broadcasted through our bond to finally understand what I was asking. She thought about it for a few more minutes while we all continued hunting in silence, eventually just shrugging. Despite the outward motion, I could tell that she would rather not ask, so I withheld my question. After a number of hours, the fencer returned to «Urbus», leaving us to continue our practice. After many hours of difficulty, each of us finally managed a single critical hit, though we were unable to reproduce it on our next few tries.

Rather frustrated and very tired, I opened up my menu to check the time and found that we had been grinding for over five hours. In that time, we had gained about half of our next level's exp. That was just... ridiculous. The other day, in about twice the time, we had earned ten times more exp against lower level mobs. Now much more frustrated, I stood back up. "It kind of feels like we wasted a lot of time today..." I said. Though, if we could master getting critical hits, it would be worth it later. But for now, it was really slowing down our leveling. "Let's gain our next level before we head back. We should use our throwing needles now. But, still try aiming for a critical. Let's see if it's possible to land one with needles as well. Keiko nodded. I could tell, even more than me, she wanted to know if getting a critical hit was possible with needles.

Now with our new five needle throwing ability, we cleared the wasps like they were nothing. While we slaughtered them at a crazy pace, compared to earlier, I thought about how awesome it would be to get criticals with needles. If we could do that, two hands of needles could hit for damage worth forty needles. That kind of damage would be enough to take down anything but a boss. And now that my mind was on huge damage amounts, I could just imagine how a full power «Flash Draw» would hit. That kind of damage would be enough to quickly reduce even Bosses to nothing.

Critical hits sounded like a dream come true, if only we could manage to master them somehow. With those kinds of thoughts in not just my mind, but Keiko's as well, we quickly slaughtered the 『Wind Wasps』 until we reached the next level. It took just thirty minutes at our new pace. Since it was already past midday, we headed off to the other town down the path, the one the fencer had gone to yesterday. The town was much less crowded than «Urbus», to the point of seeming almost deserted. Of course, once we arrived we found the reason why.

A short distance out of the town, in the direction opposite of where we came from, stood a tall tower, reaching all the way to the underside of the third floor. It had been hidden from view by all of the surrounding mountains until this point. So, players were still avoiding this town because the town closest to the dungeon was surrounded by the strongest monsters. They were still trying to level up before moving into the dungeon, which made sense. The average level of players (and unlike Kayaba, I _didn't_ count the mindless hoards camped out in the «Starting City») was probably close to level 7 or 8 by now. We were already level 14 again, getting close to our pre-debugging level. We had a little over 2500 hp again as well.

After wandering this new town, called «Marone», well more of a village as it wasn't much larger than «Horunka», we completed all the available around town quests and picked up another bunch of monster hunting quests, before settling for another night.

Intent on learning this new skill, well «OOS» skill would be a more appropriate term, we ran back to the 『Wind Wasp』 hunting ground, though there was no one around on this side of the path, so at least we didn't freak out any of the players. There again, the same girl. She offered the same bet, and this time, we each managed to land a couple critical hits, winning out money back from the day before. It wasn't anything really impressive yet, like her seemingly magical critical on every attack, but at least we could do it. We went on like that for quite some time, until we finally reached the point where if we predicted of the enemy correctly, we would usually be able make our blades pass through the point we aimed at.

Finally content with the level of our abilities for today, all three of us collapsed to the ground, completely exhausted from our crazy training. According to my clock, it was already after 5:00 pm. Since we'd come nice and early, we had been grinding for nearly twelve hours straight through. Though, due to the slower pace, we hadn't leveled up again today. Although, despite the pace, the higher level monsters were doing wonders for our «One-handed Sword» Skill. We had gained another twenty levels in the last three days, bringing it up to 84. It was already catching up to «Sprint» which had been stuck at 90 for a few days now.

"Wow, you two are pretty good. You caught on rather fast," the fencer commented.

"Yeah right, took us three days of your crazy training to be able to land our attacks right even half the time," I shot back. Though part of it was trying to be humble, I still wasn't entirely satisfied with our level of ability.

"There's something I've been wondering about though," Keiko cut in. I'd been waiting to hear this. She'd had some sort of question rattling around in her head for the last few hours, but I couldn't really tell what it was. "We have to hit the weak spot to get a critical hit, and the wasp has a weak spot in the middle of its abdomen," she started by explaining what we all knew. Then came the question, "However, how do we know where a monster's weak point is so we can target it?" I could understand what she was getting at. Without trying to hit a spot like that, it wouldn't happen on its own.

"Hmm," the chestnut-haired girl thought for a minute. "Well, you basically have to figure it out. There are monsters with marks to show their weak point, as well as ones where you have to figure it out logically. Take a humanoid monster for example. Where are the weak points going to be?" Without waiting for an answer, she gave some herself. "There's the neck, under the arms, and the back. So, hitting any of those points accurately would yield a critical hit. Of course, that would also depend on the particular mob. If they have thicker armor on their back, it's a signal the the system surely doesn't mark it as a weak point. Of course, for a monster that seems completely armored, a gap or damaged spot in the armor would likely be the sign of a weak point." We both nodded along as she spoke. It made a lot of sense, the way she said it. So, we would have to use our eyes, as well as logic, based on the monster type, to decide where to aim our attacks. "Also, landing an attack on the back of a monster that isn't aware of your presence will probably be a critical."

"I think I understand what you're getting at," I commented, Keiko noting that she did as well.

After thinking for a moment longer, the girl explained, "The only other thing I know is that some monsters, like Bosses will react when hit critically. Sometimes it's just a roar to acknowledge that you landed the hit. Although, I think there are times when landing a critical can be good or bad. Like, it might make a mob go berserk, which would be bad, but it might stun it, so you can land even more attacks. It all depends on the monster— and when and how you hit it." She closed her mouth firmly to signify that she had said everything she knew.

Wow, I wasn't expecting there to be so much information on this. It was probably all in Argo's manual, but I hadn't read it since we talked to Argo herself regularly. I sighed internally. I really should read it at some point, to catch all of the little things that just never came up because they were supposed to be common knowledge.

"Thanks a lot. We never heard about this before, somehow. It will be a big help if we find a chance to use it." She nodded with a smile. "A,actually, I don't think we've introduced ourselves this whole time," I suddenly realized. I really was bad with introductions since coming here. I definitely hadn't had that problem back in the real world...

With a smirk, she countered, "It's impolite to ask someone else's name before giving your own," but before we could even open our mouths to give ours, she gave her own anyway. "I'm Asuna."

"R,Rikit- no, I mean Rei," I stammered when I tried to answer quickly and nearly gave my real name.

"Rai," Keiko gave with a small smile while she tried to keep from laughing at me, as well as a small bow, though she was sitting down. Asuna smiled, and after a few moments, waved her hand in the air for a few moments. A message appeared in front of us, stating that Asuna wanted to add us as friends. Agreement immediately passed between us with no need for words, or even a look. We both pressed the green confirmation button, and added Asuna, now the fourth friend on our list. I read down the list, automatically sorted alphabetically by default.

『Friends』

『Argo』

『Asuna』

『Sasha』

『Thinker』

Slowly but surely, we were making forging friendships in this world. In this completely fictitious world, this imaginary birdcage hanging in the sky, we were meeting very real people and forming very real bonds. It made me wonder, how could others still not understand the very basic idea behind this world?

Even if the place was fake, the people there were not. That at least gave our time here some worth. Though I couldn't be sure how much, and whether or not it was comparable to time spent in the real world. Something like that, I would have to wait longer to find out.

Since we all went back together today, we walked along with Asuna instead of just sprinting all the way back to «Urbus». We hadn't been walking long when Asuna suddenly asked a question, as if she had just realized it herself.

"Hey, what level are you two, I haven't seen you level up at all in the last three days." While that kind of thing would normally be considered very rude, we had just added each other as friends, so it was somewhat understandable. Of course, the topic of our level coming up was enough to fluster us.

"A,ah. Well, we actually did," I explained quickly. "We actually leveled up after you left both days," I said, which was actually true. Thank you high level mobs.

"Yeah, but today, even if you are both in a party, neither of you leveled up. With the kind of experience we gained today, unless you were all the way at the beginning of a level, at least one of you should have leveled up, if not, then you definitely have to be above my level. So, what level are you?"

"Well..." I automatically confirmed that it should be ok to tell her with Keiko in the time it took me to take a breath. "We're lev-"

But, suddenly, Asuna was gone.

Author's Note: Haha, uber cliffhanger. :P


	54. Chapter 54

**A Sticky Situation**** Chapter 54**

Author's Note: Nope, just couldn't help myself.

All at once, my mind was going in overdrive. Where Asuna had been a moment ago, now there was a torrent of rocks flying upward. In the next instant, the pull of gravity finally told me that I was thinking wrong. Asuna wasn't gone, and those rocks weren't moving upward. I was falling. But how? My head snapped upward, to see Asuna staring down after me.

It was the bridge! That stone bridge we were crossing! I hadn't realized it was wide enough for two people to walk, but not three! I looked back down, to see the bottom of the bridge pass, leaving just clear air to fall through. Unsurprisingly, Keiko had fallen off the other side. With just a brief glance at each other, we both looked to the ground we would smash into in a few more seconds. I really couldn't be sure, given the circumstances, but I had to guess that the drop down from the top of the bridge was close to ten meters(34 feet, a three story building).

It was a really long way down, one that would leave a person crippled, if not dead in the real world. However, in this world, it all worked off numbers. As long as it wasn't far enough to steal every point of our hp, we would essentially walk away unscathed. Luckily, our level would probably allow us to survive the fall. Repeating that thought over and over in my head, I took a deep breath and braced myself. It really sucked that I knew this would hurt...

_BAM._ My feet struck the hard rock and my knees buckled under the force many times the weight of my body. It all happened so fast, I hardly had time to lean forward, landing face down on my arms, crossed protectively over my body. For an unknown amount of time, I just lie there, waiting for the crushing pain of the crash to fade. Finally, when I felt I could stand again, I uncrossed my arms and pushed myself back up into a sitting position. The fall had taken a big chunk out of my hp, about 35%. I pulled decent potion from one of my pouches, which would completely heal the damage in about five minutes. After downing the strange tasting drink in one go, I leaned forward, pushing myself up off my hands to get my feet under myself.

Pain exploded through my back and sent me staggering forward, until I fell over Keiko who was sitting up herself. I flailed around, jamming an elbow into the ground to roll off my back and staggered to my feet as fast as I could. Now in front of me, a green blog of some strange, gooey substance. The cursor that appeared above it was red, indicating that it was a monster. As the strange thing started moving forward again, a yellow indicator appeared in my vision. A message, now? I ignored the blinking icon and drew my sword, stepping in forward with Keiko, who had shaken off the effects of the fall once faced with a new enemy. From the looks of it, that sneak attack earlier had taken another 10% of my health. Despite the slow healing from the potion, I was dangerously close to yellow.

However, something like that wouldn't stop me. Unlike the real world, no matter how injured I became, it would not weaken me or impede my ability to fight in any way, until I was dead. So, I brandished my sword while the slimy thing morphed, large arms growing out from its body. I could feel a shiver go up my back watching, but steeled myself. It swung those huge arms in wide arcs toward us, so we had to duck, then another swing we had to backstep. It paused for a moment, and we began to press forward, but then its hands flicked backward slightly, before flying in almost too fast to see, clapping together only a few centimeters in front of us.

Now that its attack had finished, the arms were immediately sucked back into the slime, named 『Green Slime』, now that I noticed the name tag. We rushed forward attacking both attacking with identical Sword Skills. We didn't communicate at all, and there was no planning, but we just acted in unison out of habit now. The slime's delay ended, but in the time it took to regrow those two huge arms, we had cut through all of its hp, and it shattered into shards of light. We both let out a breath, collapsing against the smooth stone of the pillar supporting the bridge, on the side pointed toward «Urbus».

With the danger gone, I opened the message that was still blinking in my vision. It was Asuna, asking if we were all right. I sent back a quick reply, saying we were fine, just a bit surprised, and to head back first. It would take us some time to get out of here. After receiving a quick 'ok' back, I looked over at Keiko, who was checking the floor map.

"It looks like we have to circle around to the south, up the valley to the west here, and back around north this way," she explained, her finger trailing over the path, "to reach the entrance here. At least we'll be pretty close to the city again by then." Overall, this valley seemed to run in a semicircle, starting near the city and traveling all over, undercutting all other paths without a care. I sighed tiredly.

"I hope there aren't too many monsters blocking the way back."

...

We both collapsed in a heap. "How much farther?" I spoke into the ground.

"Still a long way to go," Keiko answered miserably.

"Are we getting any closer at all?" I asked through panting breaths. We'd been moving down this path for an hour already, fighting our way through legitimate hoards of slime monsters. We had even leveled up again in the process. The pace was excruciating though. As soon as we killed the last of twelve slimes, we had one minute before they would spawn again, forcing us to make a mad dash out of the area, however, there would be another group of twelve up ahead just moments later, which we had to fight through as well. We'd been going at this reckless pace for an hour, and had finally just collapsed after finishing the final slime in the group. If we didn't get moving soon, we would have to fight this group again. And these slimes were no joke, they were a lot stronger than the monsters we had fought up until now. They took a full eight attacks to kill, while having long reach and powerful attacks. They were definitely higher level than the wasps, probably close to our own levels.

So, we dragged ourselves back to our feet and were about to continue, when Keiko grabbed my arm. "Onii-chan, over there," her other hand pointed to a crack in the wall next to us. That area would be out of the annoyingly large aggro range of the slimes, so we would at least have a chance to rest. We swung that way, ducking into the cool shade of the surrounding cliffs. It was a reletively small crack, only a few meters deep, but it would serve its purpose.

We both fell down then, hardly able to stand any more. Normally, an hour of blitz fights against these mobs wouldn't be much of a problem, but we had already been grinding for five hours when it started, so now we were totally exhausted. I actually wasn't sure how many more times I would be able to swing my sword during that last fight.

Thank you Keiko's luck...

Author's Note: Oh yeah, would anyone like me to put up my cheatsheet that I'm using to keep track of their stats & stuff?


	55. Chapter 55

** Unexpected Encounter Chapter 55**

Edit: Woops, forgot to add a title. Fixed now.

"Urgh..." I shifted and fell over onto something soft. "What?" I tried pushing myself back up, but whatever I was on top of gave underneath me, so I couldn't quite manage it. It occurred to me that I'd been asleep, though I still couldn't quite recall the details. I groggily opened my eyes. Keiko was there too, just waking up as well. I tried pushing myself up from the ground again, but had the same problem as before. Through the hazy, sleepy feeling in my head, I could feel some sort of strong feeling coming from Keiko, though I wasn't really sure what it was. Though it was enough to wake her up immediately.

"Onii-chan!" I felt a hand crash against my face, which sent me flying backward, my head striking the rocks behind with a loud booming sound. That was enough to wake me up as well. I sat back up immediately. Keiko's face had quickly become very red, and she was holding her hands protectively around her chest. If that didn't make it obvious enough, I don't know what would.

"A,ah! Sorry, I, err, didn't realize?" I said lamely.

"Stupid, idiot, pervert Onii-chan!" was her response.

"Ehehehehe..." I tried laughing to lighten the situation, but she just glared at me for a few more moments, until something else attracted her gaze. Though, whatever it was changed her expression immediately. I turned around where I was sitting, to find the entrance to this small area filled with strange green forms and many, many red cursors.

"Oh. My. God." We both said together, in low voices. Too late now, I recalled exactly what the situation was that we had fallen asleep in. Since the sky behind was dark, indicating we had slept for quite some time, we had been hidden well enough to attract attention naturally. That meant something we did had brought them here. Something like making a loud crash...

When the green monsters started to move slowly forward, we both shot to our feet, throwing needles in both hands. This crack was just three meters deep. We were literally backed into the wall. If these monsters had weak points, that might be enough to finish them off in time, but being a round featureless blob probably meant they had no such spot. The end of this fight was already apparent, but that wouldn't keep us from struggling to the bitter, disappointing end.

A flurry of needles left our hands, slowly taking out one green blob after another. But, there were so many, they all just seemed to form into one huge mass as they proceeded, a centimeter at a time, through the tightening crack. No, they didn't just seem to be forming together, they _were_ forming together. All their red cursors were drawing together to overlap. By the time they reached within range of our swords, all the 『Green Slimes』 had formed into one giant monster, which as soon as the last one joined, had its name changed to 『Giant Slime』. Its body filled the entire space in front of us, twice our height. Somehow, it managed to keep pressing forward, even as we lashed out with all our strongest Sword Skills, boosted with all our might.

However, our attacks weren't even close to enough to cut through the giant blob's many health bars- one for each slime it had absorbed, making a tower of hp so high, I couldn't even count how many there were. Even if it was a normal monster, it had the hp of a Boss, maybe more. It continued moving forward, slowly pushing us into the tiny corner as far back as we could go. But, it didn't stop and kept pressing forward until there was no more room between us, and we simply passed through the outside of its body. Once inside, it felt like we were underwater, floating. No matter how much we struggled and flailed, it had absolutely no effect. With our movements arrested as they were, we couldn't attack either. We hadn't taken any damage though, so of course we were really confused.

The blob just kept moving forward, as if disappearing into the cliff-side, until, with the very last bit of the monster, we were pulled through the solid surface.

Beyond was... nothing. Nothing at all. There was no sign of Aincrad, or the valley, rocks, anything. Just empty air, with the faraway clouds that always hung in the sky around the floating castle. Despite the bewildering predicament we had suddenly been placed in, the slime carrying us along had not noticed one bit, and just kept propelling itself forward in some unknown way.

In just a few short moments, the world suddenly appeared around us again, as if nothing had changed. Except, we obviously weren't in the same place as before. In front of us stood some better looking greenery than anything on this floor yet, with a wider field than most to hold the patch of short trees. When the slime had moved closer, I noticed something. Little glints of metal here and there, hidden within the brush. There were players hiding up ahead. I pointed, and Keiko nodded that she saw as well.

As we moved in bit by bit, I could make out more details. The slime, with no eyes, probably hadn't noticed them yet. Hell, it hadn't even seemed to notice us while we cut away a third of its health before being sucked inside. I could see two people hiding in the center, behind a tree that clearly was not wide enough around to hide them both, well, at all really. The view was clear enough that from this far off, I could see them both arguing, they were so badly concealed. Probably hadn't taken the «Hiding» skill either. They were pointing repeatedly toward the monster we were currently trapped inside while speaking to each other with serious expressions.

When we had finally come about twenty or so meters from the little crop of trees, a little inside the opening in the cliffs, the right-hand player stepped out from behind the trees, much to the chagrin(1) of the other. This player wore heavy looking dull red armor, iron probably. I spotted some chain mail underneath his chest plate.

He must have really high strength to wear armor like that, I thought idly, while I watched these events unfold. At the moment, I was just happy to still be alive, a state which might very well end at any second.

Apart from his heavy armor, he wielded a huge two handed sword as tall as himself. That was probably the reason for the heavy armor. A huge sword would require similar STR, leaving AGI lacking. Without high agility to help avoid attacks, he would need a shield to block. And he didn't have a shield because he used a two-handed sword, which required high STR... Basically, that weapon created a big circle of problems, which he had attempted to solve by equipping heavier armor. My attention was diverted from his build when he started shouting at us.

"We'll definitely get you today!" Ok, he wasn't shouting at us, but the monster carrying us. Then, to the rest of the players, he added, "And we'll take that special quest while we're at it!" A special quest? I'd definitely have to ask them about that when the finally killed this monster off, since we probably wouldn't be able to escape until then. "Attack!" He swung his heavy sword forward with one hand, holding it pointed straight toward the 『Giant Slime』. What the players rushing forward around him probably failed to notice was the pained expression that said it was actually a very difficult pose to hold with that sword of his. Despite the ridiculous situation, we both giggled a little when we saw his look in the middle of a full battle charge.

The slime around us reared up as players entered its aggro range. Huge arms spread out from its main body, much the same as the smaller slimes did. The foremost group all halted their charge and brought weapons and shields up to defend against the incoming attacks. The slime reeled back for a second before unleashing a single powerful blow, straight across the line of players, knocking away about half, and dealing a sizeable amount of damage. When they continued to lie on the ground after being knocked down, I figured they had been stunned. Another player went around, giving potions to all the stunned players, probably to negate the effect and heal the damage dealt. The rest of the players closed in and encircled the massive monster, attacking from all sides. Luckily for us, we were floating in the center and their weapons weren't long enough to reach us, though a couple of the long spear users' stabs came a little too close for comfort.

Strangely enough, even from my position _inside_ the monster, I could still see its health bars. They were draining down, much faster than a boss's. Though that was as expected. Each bar represented a normal monster's health, while each bar of a Boss monster's health was worth a lot more points. Of course, with its shear quantity of bars, it could take some time. Lucky we had already cleared so much away. They would be able to finish it off much faster. At the encircling attack, many smaller arms grew from all around the slime and swung attacks at the players repeatedly.

As the fight continued, I was actually glad we had done so much damage, because these guys were obviously not getting anywhere fast. It took about five minutes for twelve players with all sorts of weapons to deal the same amount we had in about a dozen seconds. Well, we had been fighting for dear life, but still! The difference in power was just too much. After watching the battle for a while, I realized the reason why. It wasn't that we were strong, these players were just very, very weak. I could see it in the way they swung their swords. The motions weren't the even in the realm of Asuna or the black-haired boys, not as good as smooth as Heathcliff, not as good as Diabel either. In fact, some didn't even look as refined as Klein's, way back when the game started. These guys must have just left the «Starting City». Even worse, they trying to fight a psuedo-boss mob on the second floor at their level. It wasn't even their «Level», it was their level of inexperience that made this the most stupid thing they could try right now. Well, aside from fighting a real boss anyway least. I'd say the only thing they had going for them was that they all knew how to use Sword Skills.

As the slime's hp decreased, so did the players'. The winner of this fight would be decided by who could last longer. Of course, I could already see that it wouldn't be the players. The slime would fight until its hp was gone, the players would definitely back off once their hp turned red. That is, at 20%. They would all be close to 5% or so by the time the slime was finished, if they kept on at this rate. If they couldn't kill it, I had no idea when we would be able to get back out of here.

Of course, it was then that I noticed a bigger problem. The fabric of my cloak had become ragged and much of it had disappeared. Being in this monster was eating away at my armor. Surely, my hp would follow. The cloak was definitely my heaviest piece of armor. Against some sort of acid attack, or whatever this was, it would definitely last the longest. My clothes, which were the last barrier before my hp would start to decrease, wouldn't last nearly as long. The reinforced leather armor would take much longer to decay, probably outliving me anyway, not that it would help any. That is to say, if these players couldn't defeat the slime, we would die. Really die this time. And as I'd already foreseen, they weren't going to win. Even if we used our spare cloaks to extend our lives a little longer, it would do no good if we couldn't get out.

So, what to do? How to get out of this situation this time? Surely, there had to be some way. We'd always come through before, there had to be some way out of this one...

But as the battle went on, second by second, nothing came to mind. I considered trying to grab one of the player's weapons when they attacked, but between my slow movement and their Sword Skill's super fast speed, there was no way I could do it.

Both the slime and the majority of surrounding players were coming close to 20% hp when our cloaks finally ran out of their last points of durability and vanished. Suddenly able to see our undisguised figures, many of the players were struck dumb. Of course, that didn't bode well, as those players were quickly punished with attacks that reduced their hp to red, at which point they immediately backed off, panic clear in their expressions. Only a few managed to keep themselves grounded and stay in the fight. Among neither of those groups was the first man, with his heavy armor and two-handed sword. While unable to avoid most attacks, the massive defense and health bonuses his build provided had his hp higher than the rest. Despite receiving the counter when his jaw dropped at our appearances, he still had nearly 30% of his hp remaining.

The other players fell away as they too fell into the red zone. With just the one player remaining, the 『Giant Slime』 transformed again, growing two large arms, which would surely deal much more damage to a single target than all those little arms from before. While probably not noticed by those outside, I could feel that it also expanded across the middle, while flattening out its front and back. That meant there was less room between the single remaining swordsmen and ourselves, who floated in the center of the slime monster.

Immediately, a plan formed. I shot one look at Keiko, who nodded her understanding. Desperate, the final player brought his sword high over his head, the blade glowing crimson. His sword began arcing downward-

At that very instant, Keiko kicked hard against my back. I floated forward slightly within the slime, arms outstretched as if to wrap my arms around someone. Too bad that someone was a massive two-handed sword. The player's eyes went wide for an instant, but he was unable to cancel his sword skill before it smashed straight into my chest, my arms automatically jerking through the water-like substance to wrap around the blade. I wanted to scream as the pain assaulted my senses, but just grit my teeth and took it, since that was my plan all along. The attack continued, all the way to the ground, where I clung to the weapon as a strong suction tried to pull me back. After just a moment, the slime's body snapped back, releasing me at last. The line of pain running straight up the center of my whole body burned as I forced myself quickly to my feet.

Even as my hp bar decreased rapidly in the corner of my vision, a grin spread across my face. I turned on my heel and drew my sword, swinging it in a familiar arc in front of me to bring the blade back down near the sheath. The giant jelly-like monster refocused its attacks on me, as I was the closest aggressive player, and swung its massive arms toward me. Not even close to fast enough, I smirked. At the perfect moment, I performed the Sword Skill I could probably swing at full power in my sleep. Red fire whirled around the smooth blade of my favorite sword. I kicked my right foot in the ground as hard as I could.

Faster than my eyes could follow, even though I was the one moving, I flew forward. Actually, it was so fast I can't really be sure if I moved at all. In the same instant, I found myself a few meters away, a massive explosion ringing out behind me. My blade slid back into the sheath and I turned to examine the situation. Keiko was now sitting on the ground, safe and sound, while everyone else had their jaws glued to the ground again. The only other thing I saw was a strange visual effect. Even though my attack had passed a second or two ago, there was still red hanging in the air. However, there wasn't just a single line to mark where my sword had passed. Instead, there were countless streaks, darting in every direction, slowly fading into nothingness as I watched.

Once the red marks were gone entirely, I let out a relieved breath, an impressive battle result screen appearing before me. Even split with all those other players, that huge thing was made of a lot of slimes. Its rewards reflected as much. Five thousand exp and one thousand Col. And that was after splitting it between all these people. Well, maybe not quite evenly, considering the amounts of damage each group dealt. But still, giant monster equals giant rewards.

I actually saw most of the other players level up. They really must have been extremely low level as I'd thought earlier. Even at 5000 exp, that was only a little more than the requirement for gaining your first level. They obviously weren't _that_ low, or they probably wouldn't have survived a single attack, but for that many to level up at once, from a single monster, they couldn't have all just been close to their next level. Even for us, while all that experience was great for a single monster, it wasn't even ten percent of what we needed to reach sixteen.

Since the danger had passed, I glanced at my hp momentarily, finding that throwing myself in front of that attack earlier had cost me a full third of my life. Well, at least I didn't intend to do that often. Especially not after the way it felt... Hell, I could still feel the sting of steel across my chest. My armor hadn't fared very well, and my clothes, between getting acid burned and blasted my a huge sword, were sadly, in tatters again. I walked calmly back over to help Keiko up from the ground, and we opened our menus, quickly equipping our spare cloaks to stop their staring. Seriously, staring at a complete stranger in the middle of a field after fighting a giant monster was really awkward...

The moment our cloaks appeared again, everyone blinked, as if wondering where the two beautiful girls had disappeared, before somehow realizing that we were still standing right in front of them. Grinding my teeth in annoyance at this point, the same armored man from before stepped forward. As expected, he was the leader of this group. Like Diabel, just not as good. Wait, that sounded harsh, I realized. Although, it was true. He seemed to be a good leader, just not as experienced. Diabel had probably started out about the same way, actually. Of all things he could have said at that moment, the words that came out of his mouth were definitely not any of the ones I was expecting.

"Is something wrong?" I tilted my head slightly, with a confused look. What was he talking about? "Do you need help? Are you in trouble?" No, we'd just gotten _out_ of trouble, was he an idiot or something? "Do you need assistance? How can I help you?" Wait a second, they were all different phrases used to start quests!

"You think we're NPC's?!" I shouted angrily.

His mouth flopped open and closed a couple times before he formed words. "So, you're not NPC's?" was all that came out.

"Of course not! You see this green cursor over my head? Is there an NPC tag next to it?!" I kept shouting. "Who the hell mistakes a living person for a lifeless, computer controlled, lump of programming?!" Although, now that I had mentioned my cursor, I noticed that his was weird. It wasn't a normal green, but orange. Was that because he was lower level than me? No, that couldn't be it, he must have been the highest among this group, and none of their showed a different color. Some kind of status effect then? No, they all showed near the hp bar next to the player...

"Hey, your cursor is weird, why is it orange?" Probably because my tone was so much different from before, the man was stunned into silence for a few seconds.

Then, "WWWWHHHHHAAAAAAATTTTTT!?" After his outburst, his eyes bugged out, and when I waved my hand in front of him, he didn't respond. The group behind him appeared to have the same reaction. Impatient, I opened my menu and quickly shot a message to Argo.

『Hey, what happens when your cursor turns orange?』

Her seemingly instantaneous reply came back 『OMG WHAT DID YOU DO THIS TIME?』

『It's a long story, but I was running out of options!』 What did she mean, 'this time'? It wasn't like I just ran around doing crazy things...

Oh wait...

Author's Note: Ok, I'm going to post the cheatsheet as well. I'll try to update it with each chapter.

(1) Sorry for the sudden wtf vocab, it was the best fitting word I could think of.


	56. Chapter 56

**Orange**** Chapter 56**

Argo insisted that she come to us immediately and asked where we were, but when I answered that we didn't really know, I had to remind her that it was a really long story. Since Keiko couldn't find us on the floor map either, we asked the guys who had somewhat come to their senses now.

"We're a pretty far north right now, though the closest town is «Medai», about four kilometers south of here," one boy informed us. If I remembered correctly, he was the one who had been arguing with the armored guy before the battle. When I noticed that they were all drinking potions to restore their hp, it reminded me to do the same.

"«Medai»?" I hadn't been on the second floor long, so the only towns I'd heard of were «Urbus» and «Marome». However, Keiko couldn't find it on the floor map either. "We can't find the town on the floor map, is it too small to be included or something?" I asked.

"No, it's one of the biggest towns. Your map data must be wrong if it's not there." We'd bought the map data from an NPC, so there was no way it could be wrong. So...

"Ah, I see the problem," one guy said, looking at Keiko's map from the opposite side. "You have it set to the second floor, we're still on the first floor."

"WHAT?!" we both exclaimed in perfect unison, making everyone back up a step from the sudden intensity.

"W,well of course we are..." the apparent second in command said uncertainly. Even while he spoke, I sent another message to Argo.

『Are you SURE you want to come to us?』

『Yes.』

『Then we're on the first floor, four kilometers north of «Medai».』

『What the hell are you doing there?』

『Like I keep saying, it's a really long story.』At that point, she said she'd be here as fast as possible, though it might take some time because we were so damned far away. I sent her back a smiley face, just to get in the last dig, but she sent back an angry face in response. "Aww, darn," I mumbled. "Well, she'll be here in a bit, she said to wait here until she comes," I explained.

"So, who is this 'she'? You're talking to?" the Second asked.

"Oh, she's a friend of ours who knows everything, so she'll be able to help out probably. But anyway, you guys seem to know something about the weird orange cursor, could you explain?"

After a short pause, the same boy, probably our age, maybe a bit older, responded. "It marks the player as a criminal. It doesn't have any other effects really, but people will avoid you like some sort of monster, because the only real 'crime' you can commit in this game is PKing."

"What's that?" we both asked with blank expressions.

"Oi, oi, aren't you guys like super strong? Aren't you like pro's or something?" one guy commented.

"Nope, this is the first game we ever played," we answered, both sticking up peace signs. It was funny the way everyone always thought that, so we always joked when they asked something like that. As usual, their disbelieving expressions all said: 'ditzes' as they stared at us.

"So... what level are you two anyway?" asked one of the players hesitantly. A bold question, one which would offend most players. Usually, we would make up a normal sounding level, but, they were so much lower than us that even if we answered with a reasonable level like nine or ten, they would still be amazed, so we both answered truthfully, at the same time.

"Fifteen." Ignoring their amazed gasps, I went on. "Anyway, what's PKing?"

After they had calmed down some, the heavily armored man spoke for the first time in a while. "It stands for Player Killing."

What?

—My mouth moved, but no sound escaped my lips. That was impossible. No one would actually kill another person in here if they would really die. That was just crazy. "N,no one would do that..." I finally managed.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. No one would go that far, but its still a crime to hurt another player. I guess hitting them when they're inside the monster you're fighting counts as well..." he sighed. We all sat down to wait, since none of their group wanted to leave while one of their members was orange. Without much else to talk about, we just chatted idly, not really going deep into anything, until we finally heard someone come rushing into the area.

"You two! What did you-" Argo started shouting before we could even look her way, but quickly cut short when she realized we weren't alone. "Who are these people...?"

I let out a long sigh, then leaned forward and patted a spot on the ground across the circle from us. After she sat down, with a uncomfortable expression(probably because she was seated in the middle of a herd of gawking boys), I said, "Ok. I'll start all the way at the beginning of this last fiasco."

...

"So, any questions?" I asked with obviously faked excitement. Everyone just stared at us with dumb expressions for a few moments, before Argo spoke.

"I would call you liars, but at this point, it sounds about par for you two." She rubbed her forehead in an annoyed fashion, "But if this was the case, why did you message me as if something terrible had happened? I ran all the way out here for nothing..." She growled at us for a few moments, then stuck out her hand, "Ten thousand Col."

"What? But we just gave _you_ information!" I retaliated.

"Service charge! Your info cut it down from twenty," she countered with a huff. Perfectly beaten, I transferred the Col with a few practiced motions. "Now let's get out of here, this guy's orange status will wear off in a couple hours if all he did was hit you once. When she stood up immediately, we stumbled up to follow.

"Sorry guys, we'll be taking our leave now," we bowed before we started moving away.

"W,wait." The three of us halted momentarily when the armored man called out from behind. "Who are you guys?"

"Argo, «The Rat»." Everyone definitely recognized the name. Amazed cries started, but cut short when we spoke as well.

"We're Rei and Rai, the «Lucky Twins»." No reaction at all this time. Shaking that off, we turned to leave. Before we had even moved out of earshot, excited conversation erupted from the group behind, loud enough for us to hear.

"Frontline clearers are so cool!"

"More like scary!"

"What are you guys talking about, they're totally insane!" After that, it devolved into many voices overlapping to form incoherent noise.

With a smirk on my face, we shot straight back toward «Starting City».


	57. Cheatsheet

Note:So, here's my cheatsheet. I threw in some ####'s to help, but the formatting still pretty destroyed.

##########

—

«»

『』

#########

November 6 – Sunday First Day

exp 446700

col 418620

########

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 33

STR 12

AGI 39

HP 2718

#

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 33

STR 12

AGI 39

HP 2718

######

Stats Reset at lvl 17

lvl 17=51 total

lvl 4=0

lvl 15=33

Total Points: 84

########

One-handed Sword 101

Sp: 106131

Sprint 95

Sp: 91240

Weapon Throwing 101

Sp: 105881

#######

# E Note

Cloth shirt 2 2 Green

cloth pants 1 0 Black

cloth skirt 2 2 Blue

Boots 2 2 Brown

R-Leather b.p 2 2

R-Leather bracer 2 2

R-Leather shin 2 2

R-Leather shoulder 2 2

R-Leather knee 2 2

R-Leather elbow 2 2

Leather coat 2 0 Black

Cloak 4 2 Black

Wolf-Tooth sword 15 2 E: +7 (3S2D2Q)

Anneal Blade 2 0

Pouch 16 16

Belt 4 4

Strap 48 48

Throwing Needles 35380 500

blessed twins shard of power I 16

lots of trash mats

100% full

##########

Level chart

1 4000 0-4000

2 8000 4000-12000

3 12000 12000-24000

4 16000 24000-40000

5 20000 40000-60000

6 24000 60000-84000

7 28000 84000-112000

8 32000 112000-144000

9 36000 144000-180000

10 40000 180000-220000

11 44000 220000-264000

12 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15= 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20 80000 760000-840000

########

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

#######

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(start(less than)end):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start(less than)0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end(less than)0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end(more than)1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num(double equals)end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num(double equals)start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

Note: ^^^ That ^^^ is a python(3.1.3) script I wrote so I wouldn't have to manually figure out 1000 levels worth of skills. Edit: And it appears that FF stripped out a lot of the operators, so I put them in parentheses. I can't fix the (complete lack of) indentation here though.


	58. Chapter 57

**Another Floor, Another Dungeon**** Chapter 57**

"Uwaaa, so tired..." I sighed as we both slid down against the stone entrance to the dungeon. It was the Eleventh today, though I wasn't sure what day it would be in the real world anymore. Five days since the opening of the second floor, with the dungeon entrance opened yesterday. Apparently, the method for opening it was easier than on the first floor, just a puzzle which required the players who opened it to push blocks around in a small field to activate some pressure plates in a specific order. It had taken some time, but at least it was straightforward.

Today, we had come to the dungeon and cleared traps. We would be able to come later to actually clear the dungeon. Unlike the first dungeon this one lacked any straight lines, featuring arched caves of pure, jagged rock, with dagger and shield toting satyrs being the main enemies inside. There weren't as many traps in this dungeon, so we had been able to clear the first ten floors. Luckily, we ran fast enough to lose any monsters we passed, so we hadn't created a train like last time. But just in case, we had come at night when there should hardly be anyone inside, to avoid accidentally getting someone else involved.

Now some god-awfully early hour of the morning, we had finally made our way back out and were about to head to «Marone» village for the night, so we could come back with the rest of the Clearers tomorrow. I'm still not sure who created the term, but it had spread throughout the entire populace in the last day and a half, along with the related term, 'Frontlines'. Now, all the players actually trying to clear the game had a prevalently known classification: The Frontline Clearers. Oddly enough, everyone used Frontliners and Clearers interchangeably. Of course, being made up terms, they didn't really have a set definition, so it really didn't matter. Everyone would know what you were talking about anyway. Dragging ourselves back up from the ground, we headed back to the village.

The whole day prior, we had gone around to various hunting spots Argo had told us about which were good for efficient exp gain, but most were overcrowded terribly, and we wound up finding a path leading to a high spot where there were a few giant cow-type mobs which no one was fighting. We took the opportunity to test our skills against them, and found that they were actually pretty tough monsters. While we were fast enough to avoid most everything they tried, they had a huge amount of defense, so it took forever to bring them down. While the exp they gave was decently high, the mobs took too long to kill for it to be efficient, and we quickly left.

While wandering around «Urbus» we found a familiar face. It was that one guy we saw back in «Horunka» with the big three-horned helmet (not easy to forget something like that) and decided to follow him for a bit. It turned out that he was trying to reinforce the «Anneal Blade» he had earned back the last time we'd seen him, though he was unlucky and failed all four times. What caught our attention though, was the smith he had taken his weapon to. It was a player smith, the first we had seen since this all started. The player was very sorry and bought the sword from Ryufior- oh yeah, that was the horn-helmet guy's name, and the distraught Ryufior and his friends went off to redo the quest.

It wasn't long after that when we'd heard about some players opening the dungeon, and decided to clear the traps today. Making it back to town, we quickly made our way through the empty streets and without even eating first, went to our room, falling asleep immediately.

…

"Onii-chan... Onii-chan... Onii-chan! ONIIII-CHAAAAANNN!" I could feel someone shaking me, but rolled over, waving them off.

"Five more minutes..." I grumbled.

"That's what you said five minutes ago!" The sharp exclamation cut through my sleepy mind for a moment, before I sank again. Only half-conscious, I felt someone grab my hand. I heard the soft jingling sound of bells a few times, though it hardly registered. Then-

"Aaahh!" a shout escaped my mouth and my back arched as sudden sharp pains shot up and down my spine. I opened my eyes while rolling sideways, then didn't feel a bed under me anymore. I hit the floor with a crash, landing face down. "Ow ow ow," I grumbled, pushing myself back up again, when I noticed I wasn't wearing anything, not even underwear. Now that I could think clearly, I realized that my left nipple was seriously sore. "Ow," I rubbed my arm against it while Keiko snickered.

"Payback for the other day," she said with crossed arms.

"No fair..." I pouted while bringing up my menu to get dressed.

After a quick meal at a nearby shop, we set out for the dungeon. Now that all the traps had been cleared, the dungeon would be a lot less dangerous for everyone. Hopefully that would keep the casualties down this time. We really couldn't afford to lose players at the rate we had lost those going into the first floor dungeon. I was willing to take some of the risk if it could help everyone else. Hell, all the rest of the players accepted the risks themselves, why shouldn't we?

A few minutes of running(at a bit of a slow pace to keep from scaring people,) brought us back to the the dungeon entrance from yesterday. The floor had just been opened within the past week, but there were already pretty good crowds of players moving inside with their parties. There were even a number of people standing around outside forming parties with strangers, so everyone could have a full party. Things were getting organized pretty quickly, it made me feel like the pace would surely pick up. We would definitely be able to clear this floor faster than the first. It wasn't so much a matter of level as it was just game experience. Everyone here knew what they were doing at least.

We were about to enter the dungeon when someone called out to us. We looked over to find a young man waving at us. Shrugging, we made our way over to him. He immediately introduced himself as Kains. He seemed about the same level as most frontliners, with medium armor and a short spear. Around him was a small crowd of other players.

"Were you two about to go into the dungeon alone?" he asked. We nodded once. "Don't you realize it's dangerous? You don't look like you're prepared to go alone." He couldn't see any of our equipment, so he should have no idea, but he made the claim anyway. While he was obviously wrong, he didn't stop speaking to give us time to correct him. "Here, there's a group of four waiting that could use another two members. Go with them." He was ordering us around now?

We watched silently as he brought forward the four players he wanted us to go along with. They all looked older than the average player. There were two men with heavy armor and large shields and a third with glasses and a curved sword. Amazingly, the last was a female player who wore a half-cloak in favor of armor. She had a sword and shield as well. Another female player. What did that make, the fourth one we'd met so far? Unlike Asuna, ourselves, and Argo somewhat,(though it was probably for a different reason) she didn't wear a large cloak to cover her appearance. In fact, she appeared to be perfectly comfortable and confident. A self-assured smile sat on her face as if it belonged there, while she stood with one hand propped on the hilt of her sword.

"Hi," she started, then, "well, you two seem to be in a hurry, so we won't delay." With just those short lines, she started forward, shocking even her own party members with her abrupt decisiveness. They quickly moved to follow, and we waited a moment after they all passed. The confident young women kept walking, not even looking back to make sure we followed. Keiko and I quickly exchanged a look while letting our individual decisions transfer through our bond. As usual, we were already on the same wavelength. With a confident leader like her, the party would have no trouble, especially since there were no traps awaiting them. However, if we were forced to join in with others, this may be the best group to go with, as they probably wouldn't slow us down.

Since they were at the entrance to the dungeon, a number of meters away, we both pressed our feet against the ground hard, kicking down after a moment to activate a new skill we had discovered. It was the same one I had noticed for the first time two days prior, during the fight with the 『Giant Slime』, a «Sprint» skill, probably earned at level 95 or 100(Since those were the only round numbers our skill level had hit within that time frame). The name was «Flash», an active skill, which, when activated, would instantly move the player forward a short distance; the actual amount was dependent on the level of their «Sprint» skill. Currently, the maximum distance we could «Flash» was ten meters. Unfortunately, the skill had a two minute cooldown, meaning we couldn't use it many times consecutively. Basically, it was good for a short flash of incredibly fast movement, but only once during a fight. So, it was good for a strong opening blow mostly.

However, at this moment, it would be good for catching up to the group moving on ahead, since we wouldn't have to run, and the instantaneous movement made no sound, nor gave any indication of being used. So, someone would actually have to be watching us to notice what we did. If they were looking somewhere else, it would just be a flash of motion. Once they looked, we would already be walking as normal. So, just like that, we were on the heels of the two heavily armored players, walking with quick strides to move around them and take position near the women who obviously lead this party of theirs. Since we were going with them, we would need to be added to their party.

When she saw that we had agreed to come along, the somewhat tall women turned while walking. "Thanks for joining, I'm Griselda. These two lugs are Schmitt and Caynz. And right here is my husband Grimlock." At first, I was noticing how Kains and Caynz sounded the same, but then did a double-take when I realized the next words that she had said. Did she just say that Grimlock was her husband?

"H,husband?" I asked the single word as a question, at which point she nodded happily. "You can get married in SAO? I mean, is it actually part of the system?"

She nodded again, then explained, "You just have to send the other player a marriage proposal though your friends list, and when they accept, you are married. Both people get a wedding ring." She held up her hand to show us the gold ring seated on her finger, indicating she was married, just like in the real world. "So, now that we've introduced ourselves, what are your names?" Griselda asked.

Due to her strangely authoritative air, we both bowed and gave our names immediately. In another moment, she sent the party request. We accepted, and she asked, "Since we're in a party now, could you take off the mysterious hoods so we can actually see who we're talking to?" with a hint of laughter in her voice. Even though a note of wariness poked at me, I did as asked. Griselda really was incredibly charismatic. Almost just like Diabel, only without the knightly attitude. She was more like a cool Onee-chan.

When we removed our hoods, everyone reacted as expected, though Griselda managed to contain her surprise better. She smirked, saying, "Well well, that's what you were hiding. I certainly wasn't expecting that. You two aren't just pretty faces, are you? Can you fight?"

"We really are pretty good, despite how we look," I explained. It was weird how no one ever wanted to believe us.

"Well, we're about to find out just how good," she commented, spotting two monsters ahead. We were pretty close to the second floor, as most of the first floor was currently being cleared by groups who came earlier. They were two goblins with daggers. They were too small to hold shields, but were pretty quick and excelled at dodging attacks while unleashing long combos of slashes with their quick daggers. "You two take point, we'll see just how well you can fight." We nodded to our temporary leader. We would show these guys that we really did know what we were doing.

Both looking at each other to confirm we were ready, we took deep breaths, letting them out to bring our breathing into sync. We leaned forward for a moment, twenty meters between us and the goblins. Then, we rushed forward with the greatest speed our abilities would allow, covering the entire distance in hardly a single second. Even in that time frame, we were able to throw two full handfuls of needles into each of the targets ahead. With no more distance to go, we drew our swords from their sheaths while already triggering a «Reverser», a Sword Skill comprised of two «Slants», where the second slash moved directly back along the trajectory of the first. The attack was aimed directly at their necks, which was generally the weak point of humanoid mobs. Coming from below at an angle like it was, landing a critical was really not very hard on such an enemy. So, both slashes struck critically and dealt a huge amount of damage. All that training against the annoyingly agile bees actually made regular ground based mobs seem slow and easy to target.

Despite their size the 『Goblin Knifer』 actually had pretty high hp, so the one attack wasn't enough to finish it. Of course, the critical hits were enough to knock it off balance momentarily and interrupt its attempt at an attack, giving time to recover from the longer delay, since it was higher than a basic skill. The goblins made an attempt to start a combo, but we both parried the first attack upward, using the motion to step past them. Our swords glowed red as we struck a somewhat odd pose, with our left foot extended and our swords pointed backward from the center of our torsos. It was the starting position for the Sword Skill «Whirl», our most recently acquired skill, which was supposed to be a strong single strike attack to all targets in a circle. However, since the scope of the attack was slightly larger than 360 degrees, when we started in a position like we were in, it was possible to attack the same target twice.

Stepping far forward on our right feet, the blades in our hands jumped out, cutting into the goblins' heads, since they were shorter than us. We both spun fully around once lowering our bodies throughout the attack. Our swords came back to the same place as they started, then moved slightly further, the last bit of their motion landing embedding them directly in the two monsters' necks, before the system assist determined the Sword Skill had ended. Our attacks stopped halfway through the screaming goblins' necks, but it didn't matter since their hp had already fallen to zero. They shattered into an array of light effects, hovering all around us, while heavy footsteps stopped a short distance behind.

We both turned immediately, swords brandished at the new threat, when we saw our temporary party there. Lowering our weapons immediately, we sheathed the blades and waited for their thoughts on the fight.

"Well, now I see why you two were about to enter the dungeon alone, you've got some skills there. Not to mention some Sword Skills I haven't seen before. What are your «One-handed Sword» skill levels?" She asked. It wasn't quite as invasive as asking about our actual level, since they were just skills, but it was still a bit disconcerting being asked our stats. Of course, being our temporary leader, we told her.

We'd just checked a little while ago, when we were going over our stats and new skills, so we both knew the level off the top of our heads. "Level 102," we answered together.

While the rest of the party had their jaws on the floor, Griselda smiled. "You two certainly are something."

"We get that a lot, though not usually in a good way..." I commented with a smirk while thinking about Argo.

Author's Note: Finally done. Been so busy I swear I wrote this like one sentence at a time.


	59. Chapter 58

**Clearing**** Chapter 58**

The day went off without a hitch. We went along with this party, helping out whenever needed, but mostly just keeping to ourselves. The two tank builds were pretty competent, but the one curved sword user, Grimlock, didn't seem to have his heart in it. Basically, he hesitated. Unlike everyone else, he didn't throw himself into combat, but tried to keep his distance and only move in when he thought the monster's attention was elsewhere. Griselda, of course, was very strong. She definitely had an AGI build, though maybe not as imbalanced as our own.

With no traps and so many other players helping clear other areas, we made it all the way to the end of the tenth floor around 5:00 pm. While looking at the stairs up, Griselda decided we would keep going for another hour, and started to ascend.

"Wait," we both said at the same time. She turned back to us, who had been silent for so long, raising an eyebrow as a question. "We can't go any further than here." I said.

"And why is that?" she asked with a neutral expression.

"Well..." should I tell them? I asked the thought to Keiko silently. After a few moments of indecision, I got back a surprising answer. No idea. "mmmm" I mumbled. If Keiko couldn't make up her mind, I'd have to figure this one out. Well then, a simple explanation would probably be best. "It's just that none of the traps above this level have been cleared yet." It made sense for someone to be worried about traps, so that should satisfy her question.

"And how did you know all the traps up to here were already cleared?" she asked without pause.

"Because we cleared them," I answered, a moment too late realizing what I'd just said and clamping my hand over my mouth in surprise.

"Ooh?" she cooed with a grin. By my reaction, she knew I wasn't lying. Crap, if I'd just laughed or something, they would have thought it was a joke! "Then could you clear the next floor's traps for us? It would definitely make it safer for everyone else."

That was a surprisingly good-natured request. Except, if there was anyone else on the floor already, they would definitely die if we tried. "We can't if there's anyone else on the floor. It's very dangerous. We would if you could confirm that..." but I didn't think she could confirm something like that. However, she opened her menu and started typing. Within a few minutes, a number of players descended from the floor above, saying hi to Griselda. We both leaned against a nearby wall, trying not to be noticed.

After an exchange of greetings between the couple parties, Griselda asked, "So, you guys were all the ones on that floor?"

"Yeah, the other parties all decided to head back. We're the only ones who stayed to clear the next one. If you're going up, be careful, there are traps on that floor. We triggered one a little ways in."

—That voice! I turned toward the man speaking, staring at the red uniform which had shoulder armor like samurais wore. With a face like a delinquent and a headband to hold his spiky hair straight up, I knew this man. "Klein-san!" I said happily, "what's up man?" with a big smile.

"Oh? Woah, hi Rei, long time no see." We slapped a hi-five in greeting before he dropped to one knee, taking Keiko's hand. "And how is the beautiful Rai today?

_Whack._ "Hands off the little sister," I warned while he rubbed the spot on his head where I'd hit him.

Griselda, watching this mumbled, "such different treatment..." Her voice made me I realize everyone was watching us.

"Ah, but don't mind us now. We're just tagging along with these guys today." With that, I stepped back to lean against the wall again. Klein cleared his throat and quickly walked back to where he'd been standing before.

"Anyway, what did you call us here for?" he asked, all business again.

After gaping for a few more moments, Griselda pulled herself together. "These two said they need to clear the next floor of traps before continuing on-"

"Uwaa!?" Klain gasped, probably visualizing what that would look like.

Griselda blinked rapidly, asking, "What wrong?"

"But, that's so dangerous! Which reminds me, how the hell did you two get this far anyway?"

"We cleared the rest earlier," I said, giving a peace sign. "But this is as far as we got."

"Wait, you're saying that you two are the reason there haven't been any traps in the first ten floors of the dungeon? Isn't that lie a bit too much?" someone from the third party interrupted. When I looked over at him to say it was true, I saw the dark armor, and large two-handed sword, but my eyes were locked onto his gaunt face and greasy hair. Immediately, rage flared inside me.

"You! You're that bastard from the shop! I stepped forward raising my fist, but Keiko grabbed me from behind. Her thoughts were completely clear to me.

Don't attack him or you'll become orange.

I grit my teeth, then glared down at the man who had fallen on his butt in panic, now dragging himself backward, before letting out a tense breath and forcefully turning my head away with a 'hmph'.

Two loud claps caught everyone's attention again. "Well, if we're done getting sidetracked, let's have you two clear the next floor of traps. As you requested, there is no one on the floor now. Though I have no idea how you intend to do what you say, could you get to it?" Griselda asked.

"Yeah, sure," I responded quickly, a bit embarrassed at being scolded by the older women. We all climbed the staircase toward the next floor stopping at the top of the stairs, right before the line on the floor that separated the stairs from the eleventh floor. Since the stairway was only wide enough to fit two people side by side, Keiko and I stood in front, with Klein and Griselda behind. Everyone else was smashed together behind them, to get a look at whatever was about to happen.

"Ok, when we start going, you should probably duck," I advised them.

Their two mumbled responses were, "Didn't have to tell me that," and "seriously?"

"We'll be back in a bit. It depends on how bit this floor is, but it'll probably be around twenty minutes of a half hour." After a glance back to see them nod, we focused our attention forward. A four way intersection was the beginning of the floor, with three ways heading out and the fourth being the stairs. We were aimed straight forward. Taking a few breaths to steady ourselves, we synchronized our breathing again. With no words, the message passed back and forth between us.

Ready.

Set.

GO!

We shot forward as fast as possible. Low drumlike sounds emanated through the corridor. Then, monsters burst from every surface, as well as pillars of stone and large toothy mouths. Over top of it all, a mixture of frightened and panicked screams rang down the hall behind, coming from the stairwell. However, these screams were quickly overpowered by the sounds of monsterous screams and massive explosions.

We turned a corner, all hell exploding in a tumult behind us, and kept going, my dungeon map guiding us to move through all the unexplored pathways to clear all the traps on this floor.

…

We passed by the top of the staircase again at one point, in order to clear the other two paths branching from there, bringing another round of surprised screams. After making our way back through a few clear passages, we were back at the stairs again, finished. We both plopped down on the top step, panting.

"All... done." I said slowly. Then, I flopped down on the rough floor, not even caring. After my breathing had even out enough, I told them, "You can go ahead, we'll catch up in a minute."

"Well, even if you say that, it's almost six now, so we're going to head back..."

"Seriously?" I asked, propping myself up on my hands to look at her apologetic face. I let out a long sigh, dropping back down again. "I guess it can't be helped then."

"But, wow! that was really surprising," Griselda stated. "I didn't expect you two to clear all the traps by triggering all of them." I rolled my head to the side slightly so I could see past myself, to find everyone besides Klein nodding along to her words. "Also, you two run really fast. What's you're AGI?"

"Thirty nine points," we both answered together.

"T,that much?" she looked shocked for a moment, then asked, "with that much, what's your STR?" I could see her counting on her fingers, how many levels worth of points we had put into our Agility parameter. I hadn't realized that by knowing our stats, another player could figure out our level. Even just knowing the one, she could already reason that we were level 13, at the very least. Even so, I was tired and didn't feel like keeping that hidden.

"Twelve," we spoke in unison again, since Keiko had waited for me to make up my mind.

After doing the math for a few more seconds, Griselda concluded, "That's level 16! You guys are way stronger than you look!"

I waved my hand nonchalantly. "Like I said, we get that a lot."

"That brat, level 16?" I heard the voice of the greasy-haired man say.

"Haha, I teach 'em well!" Klein boasted, only to quickly get asked why they weren't all that level by his men. "Oh, come on..." he moaned, before they all broke in raucous laughter.

Funny that we weren't actually level 16. We still had a few thousand exp to go before we finally regained our previous level.

When Griselda managed to calm everyone down again, we all headed back to town. Since we were too tired from the day, we wouldn't be able to clear the next levels of their traps. And with the dungeon full of Clearers tomorrow, we wouldn't have the chance then either. So, we would need to find something else to do, but what?

On the way back, I asked Keiko about it, but she said we'd figure that out after getting some sleep.


	60. Chapter 59

**A Not so Lazy Day**** Chapter 59**

We had no plans as to what we were doing the following day, and took the opportunity to sleep in. However, we were both getting restless around 8:00 am anyway, since we were already accustomed to waking up at the crack of dawn.

"That's it, let's just go do _something_!" we both sat up in bed, speaking at the same time. Leaving the inn, we wandered through the streets for a while. We had already completed all of the quests within the town, so there was nothing to do. And everyone else was out hunting or clearing the dungeon, so the empty streets echoed our footsteps hollowly as we moved around at a sluggish pace.

"How do you think it's going for the Clearers today? After the eleventh floor, they'll have to worry about traps again. Think it'll slow them down?" I asked. "Actually, now that I think about it, just how many floors are there in this dungeon anyway?"

"Mmmm, it'll probably slow them down some, but I'm not sure by how much... But the second one is easy. Here, watch." Keiko opened her dungeon map, pointing at the completion amount. "After eleven floors completely explored, we have 73% complete. If you divide 11 by .73 you get..." She mulled over the numbers for a few seconds before concluding, "Fifteen floors."

"Ah, so this one is smaller than the other... And we're almost to the top already. We've only been on this floor for five days now, well six if you count today. We'll make it to the Boss Room within the next day or two, then another day or two of scouting fights... We'll probably clear this floor in about a week and a half! That's a lot better than the last one." I smiled when I realized how much the pace had picked up.

"Of course it's going better now. Before, a lot of people thought the game was unclearable. When we finished the first floor, it brought a lot of reinforcements from «Starting City»."

"Yeah, like those guys from the other day. They aren't on the second floor yet, but they're players who can replace the ones lost on the frontlines," I thought out loud. Although the thought of the clearers dying wasn't a pleasant one, I couldn't ignore it. Especially after the two thousand who had died just trying to clear the first floor.

After talking through that, we again walked in silence, no other topics coming to mind. Normal people would be hunting right now, but I really just didn't feel like it. I just felt so... lazy. As we sat on a bench, I pulled open my menu and looked over my stats again. "Hey Keiko, our «Sprint» skill isn't the highest anymore," I noted.

Leaning over my shoulder, she said, "Ah, that's right. It's been getting harder to level up lately, hasn't it?" I nodded along to that. It was level 101, currently two levels below both «Weapon Throwing» and «One-handed Sword». Normally, this wouldn't be much of a concern, except that until a few days ago, (more specifically, since reaching the second floor) it had been nearly forty levels higher than our other two skills. To close that gap in just a few days, the difference in points gained in the two skill types was huge. Also, the gap would only grow larger the higher we went.

"Then, you want to train our «Sprint» skill today? Let's just run all around and level it up some," Keiko suggested. Normally, it would make more sense to actually train some than to just run around to train one skill, but since neither of us were in the mood for that, just running around like crazy people would probably work out.

"Sure, let's go. Not like we have anything better to do anyway." After a quick jog to the edge of town, we looked around. We'd said, 'just go running', but just where would be be running to?

"Doesn't matter, let's just go!" Keiko leaned forward, and I quickly adjusted my stance before she sprung into motion. We shot across the small clearing, heading up one of the paths leading out of town. Whever we came to a fork in the road, we would just turn at random.

Running and running, we covered so much ground it was unbelievable. All over, totally at random. Once in a while, we would pass a player or two hunting some mobs, and seriously scare the hell out of them. At first it felt like I was getting out of breath, but players didn't need to breath in SAO. So, the feeling just went away after a while. The most fatiguing thing in this world was fighting, so running was easy, not hardly tiring at all. And while we could get hungry, something like that wouldn't keep us from running. I'd never really realized before, but there really wasn't anything in this world to stop someone from doing any one thing for as long as they pleased without stopping to take a break. And so, we just ran, on and on. We ran for so long, I lost all sense of time.

We probably ran around the second floor so many times, we'd personally been on every single pathway to speak of. After making pass near «Urbus» we made a left turn and were on a pathway leading to the top of one of the mountains. Once up, we found ourselves back inside the the first floor dungeon, but we kept going anyway. Down the stairs and out into the deserted boss room, we shot through the room we'd only seen once before. Now that there was no boss to inhabit it, the walls were all cool blue, no more intense rainbow colors. Despite the apparent lack of lighting, the pale blue coming through the glass on all sides lit the room well enough to see the other side.

About halfway through the room, a strange feeling ran up my back. I cut to a stop, sliding a few meters because of my momentum. Keiko had definitely felt the same thing, and we looked around in confusion. Without the boss, this room was vacant. And since there was a «Teleport Gate» in town, there would be no reason for anyone to enter this room again. Basically, this room was the single most empty place in all of Aincrad right now. And later on, the other Boss Rooms would be like it.

"Huh, I never thought about that before," I said quietly, though my voice echoed in the expansive area.

After a yawn, Keiko asked, "What time is it anyway?" while opening her menu. "10:00 am? We've been running for almost two hours already?"

"Ugh, no wonder why I feel tired." I yawned as well. "Come on, let's get back to town and figure out how to kill the rest of the day." We turned to head back, and kicked against the ground to get back up to speed. We would have to slow down to go up the stairs though—

Knives.

With no warning, there were knives everywhere, all flying toward us. Somehow, it took me longer to notice than it should have. They were too close already. My arms closed around Keiko as I spun, deflecting what I could with a flourish of my cloak. I managed to block the rest with my body, reducing my hp by about 10%. The damage wasn't what I was worried about though. It was the icon marking the end of my hp bar. Paralysis. I was completely unable to move, with my arms hugged close around Keiko from behind.

Seemingly out of thin air, five players appeared, dark cloaks covering their appearances. They all had orange cursors. Orange Players. Keiko's eyes went wide as they all held up more throwing knives, green with paralysis poison. Were these people crazy? They were clearly trying to kill us. Not steal our items or equipment, their intention was just to kill. How was such a thing possible? Didn't they know we would really die?

Their hands moved up into position to trigger the «Single Weapon Throw» skill, but for the first time, Keiko was overcome with fear. These weren't mindless monsters we could just slaughter our way past. These were other living, breathing, human beings, trapped within this game of death. With a blue glow, their weapons left their hands, all flying toward us as the adrenaline coursed through my brain in a way that hadn't happened in a long time. I could feel my phantom heart beating out of my chest as my perception sped up, making it seem as if time slowed to a crawl. I would not allow us to die here.

I took control of Keiko's body, forcing her limbs move to my will as I told them to spread her feet into a wider stance. Press the right foot down as hard as possible. Then, one thought boomed out from my consciousness. «Flash»!

Darkness.


	61. Chapter 60

**In the Dark**** Chapter 60**

Author's Note: Dead Turtle: "Dun dun dun! A wild PKers appeared!" Exactly what I was thinking afterward! XD

For a few moments, I waited anxiously. I knew we had gotten away from those... PKers... But, where were we now? There was nothing but darkness, I couldn't even see Keiko, who I could still feel my arms around.

"O,Onii-chan?" Keiko asked in a small voice.

"Here," I managed to say despite still being paralyzed. After a few seconds, the indicator next to my hp bar blinked once. Then again, and again more quickly. In just a few seconds, it began to blink at a rapid pace, then vanished. Since the effect had ended, probably a total of fifteen or twenty seconds, I unclenched my arms from Keiko's shoulders, though I made sure to keep a hand on her, so we wouldn't lose each other in the darkness.

"Looks like that paralysis wore off," I noted.

"But, w,who were those guys?" she asked. Even now, I could feel terrible fear inside her. I tried to stay calm, in hopes of evening it out, but even I could feel that underneath my calm, I just wanted to cry.

"Come on, let's try to find a way out of here." The darkness was absolute, as we stumbled around like blind people, hands groping for a wall or something. After a minute, I opened my menu, perfectly visible despite there being no illumination. However, it did not appear to cast any light, so it wouldn't help us find our way. I searched through all the random stuff currently occupying our inventory, but of all the antlers and stingers and furs, nothing stuck out to me. I didn't look at any of the items and think 'ooh, this would make light!' and in the end closed my menu with a sigh.

"Then how about we do it this way?" Keiko said suddenly. I had no idea what she was talking about as she opened her menu, opening the inventory the same way I had, and flicking to scroll down the menu. She tapped one of the items, and when the menu stopped scrolling, I looked at the thing she had selected. To my surprise, it was an item we had in our inventory for so long I didn't even notice it there anymore. The «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I». In a moment, the strange looking shard appeared in the air in front of us. I could tell, because despite having nothing around to illuminate it, the shard glowed brightly in the darkness anyway.

Unfortunately, like the menu, it glowed with its own light, but cast none on the environment around us. "That's weird, it should have worked..." Keiko said uncertainly.

"How come?" I asked. I wasn't aware that she knew any more about the strange item than I did.

"Because I closed my eyes and picked an item at random. So, it should definitely be able to put out light..."

"Ah, that is strange," I replied. Of course, it must mean we didn't have anything in our inventory capable of producing light, so she had just gotten a random item.

"Come on, just make light..." she muttered at the little shard. Of course, neither of us expected it to actually light up when she did!

"D,did you just..."

"I think I did..." We looked around under the dim lighting of the shard, finding the floor to be of flat gray, like a single piece of perfectly smooth stone. Well, the color was too even for stone, so it would be more like plastic- perfectly one color. In all directions, after five or so meters, the light fell off to leave pure darkness.

"Where are we? We definitely aren't dead, my hp is still almost full," I said. Besides, with our current levels, we wouldn't have died from a single barrage of knives like that anyway. Slowly, we walked around, though there didn't appear to be anything here. Nothing at all. Eventually, we grew agitated at the empty space and started running. However, after just a few moments, we saw something in front of us. Or, it would be more accurate to say we _didn't _ see anything in front of us. We dug our feet into the floor, but it was too smooth and we slid, no longer anything beneath us, and fell through empty space. The floor we'd been on before was still next to us, a lone wall, as if that bare floor had been at the top of a tower.

"Aaaahhh!" we screamed together. Even if we didn't know where we were exactly, it wouldn't keep us from falling to our deaths in this strange place. No, we couldn't just fall to our deaths here, we had to make it through this somehow! I drew the sword at my waist, stabbing it into the single wall with all my might. The blade dug in, and our descent slowed, though not by much. Keiko drew her blade and jabbed it into the wall as well. Though we were still descending at a scary pace, it shouldn't be enough to kill us when we hit the bottom. That is, if there was a bottom...

For a number of minutes, we continued to slide as the durability of our swords chipped away bit by bit. We had plenty of spares, but who knew how long this would continue? And then, with no visual indication, we hit the ground again. For a few minutes, we rolled around on the ground, trying to shake off the pain, before we managed to stand, draw our swords out of the wall, and switch them out for a backup pair with the same reinforcements. That way, they could slowly regain their durability while sitting in our inventory. If we ever made it back to town, we could have a blacksmith repair any remaining damage.

With Keiko holding the shard of light high, we continued to walk on, moving away from the wall that had saved us, each drinking health potions as we walked to heal the large amount of damage we had taken. After walking some unknown distance, we started running again, though slower this time. At a mild jog, we went on and on, no idea where we were headed. No matter how far, there had to be _something_ here, right?

At some point, we found another wall. Picking one direction, we started jogging along this wall. The flat gray ground stretched on endlessly as it had before, but at least this one wall gave us some sense of grounding in this empty space.

The wall made a sharp turn and we followed around the corner, finally seeing light for the first time. At some incredibly far-off distance, there was a tiny point of light. In our excitement, we couldn't help but begin to run for it. In the next moment, I realized running toward the light was a big mistake, but it was too late. I heard the telltale click of traps triggering. After hearing the traps, I felt relieved, since it turned out our 'mistake' saved us when the entire space behind seemed to crush in on itself, like a black hole instantly sucking the entire space into nothingness. As we heard the next trap trigger, we kicked against the ground hard, immediately dropping into the fastest sprint we possibly could. A series of clicks preceded the strangely silent collapse of everything behind us.

As we went all out toward the forever distant point of light, I could somehow tell that the time between triggering the traps and space collapsing behind us was shortening. Instead of hearing the distance between the click and a sound effect, it was like I heard the distance between the click and the silence that followed. However it happened, I could tell that these traps were slowly growing closer as we went.

The tiny light slowly began to grow in front of us, and we just kept on as fast as possible, until we started to feel the pull with every new trap triggered. At first it was just a slight thing, which I could only tell from the increased pressure of my cloak on my shoulders. However, as we pressed on, the pressure became stronger with each passing trap, until I felt that we were just on the verge of being pulled in each time. The light resolved itself into what looked like an opening in this darkness, like a door to the outside world. However, at this rate, we would never make it.

When the next trap triggered, my eyes went wide, I could feel it before it happened. This one would catch us and we would be crushed into nothingness. We would die. It was almost becoming habit now, as the instant I came to that realization, we both stepped down as hard as we could activating «Flash» to shoot as far forward as we could. However, the active skill didn't function at all the way I was expecting it to. I was hoping to see the door of light become marginally closer and the trap about to annihilate our existence fall behind. While the trap fell behind as expected, the door of light changed entirely in that instant that we jumped across space.

Apparently, «Flash» moved us a lot farther than before, because instead of the door becoming a bit bigger in my view to indicate we'd moved closer, the door now stood towering above us. Through the blinding light radiating inside, we couldn't see anything, but another click sent us charging straight through without the slightest hesitation. As soon as we moved into the space beyond the door, our feet failed us as we slowed back to a halt. We stared around at the totally unreal scene before us.

Sky.

All Sky.

We were outside Aincrad.

Author Note: I'm really laying it on thick with the cliffhangers, aren't I? :P


	62. Chapter 61

**Nowhere to Run**** Chapter 61**

We both stared for a few moments. The sky we had only gotten glimpses of between one floor and the next now stretched all around us, the sun beginning to make its trip up the sky. We looked down, to find that we were standing on a long, grayish surface. It was only a few meters in breadth, then sloping down sharply at an angle which one would certainly slide down without resistance. It extended a long, long ways out ahead of us.

Terrible screeching echoed out from the opening we had just came through. When we spun around to find the source, my eyes immediately focused on shapes moving in the darkness. There were monsters in there? Or, they had been summoned by that final trap probably. As we drew our weapons, my eyes focused on the dark figures. However, no red cursor appeared above their head, indicating that they weren't actually monsters. Not system-recognized ones anyway. No hp bar, no name, nothing.

The glowing white eyes flashed and we both tensed for them to come. However, we had never met monsters like these before. Almost faster than my eyes could follow, the first dark shape shot out from the darkness, though it didn't change appearance at all in the light. As if no light reflected off its body, there was just darkness, showing the shape of some half-human, half-bug thing. It's arms flashed out in an aggressive motion, and I brought my sword up to parry. But, these things obviously weren't meant to be fought. The force of its blow sent me sprawling backward, staggering and spinning around to keep my footing on the smooth surface. If I took one step wrong, it could send me over the edge, where I would certainly fall to my death.

I shook my arm, nearly numb from the force of the blow, as Keiko parried back an attack, falling back beside me. "Let's just get away from these things somehow," she said with a strained voice.

"Yeah." We turned heel and ran straight in the other direction, though it would eventually dead-end. All the way at the end of this long, skinny path, lie a large spike-like structure. We were currently on one of those spikes that shot out around Aincrad, just like the picture on the front of the game box.

As our feet pounded on the hard, marble surface, I heard the horrible screeching of those dark monsters tearing up the path behind us. Even with our unbelievable movement speed, they were definitely catching up. How the hell were we going to get out of this one?

"Keiko, screwed not wanting to cheat! I want to survive more!" I shouted so she could hear me over the sound of the wind, which grew much strong the further we ran from the castle. My hands flew as I opened up my character menu. I had thirty-three points available to spend, so I put points into agility until I had 60 in total. I wasn't even paying attention to just how many points it was that I'd spent. My eyes flashed to the number of points remaining, 12 points. Those all went into strength, completely doubling my strength parameter.  
With eleven levels worth of increased stats, our movement speed picked up even more, as we kept going as fast as possible toward the spire ahead. Somehow, even with our increased speed, I could hear the monsters continuing to close the distance between us. After a few minutes of running, we were coming close to the spire, but the monsters were right on our heels, finally, sensing they had come too close, Keiko spun back, lashing out with a powerful «Horizontal». The frontmost monster barely parried it, but at the very instant the Sword Skill's delay began, a second dark form lashed out so fast, I hardly had time to thrust my own blade forward, catching its claws and redirecting the attack away. Without stopping, I turned and grabbed Keiko, dashing away again as fast as we could. I shoved my weapon back into the sheath while running, to free up my right hand so I could operate my menu.

"We can't use Sword Skills against those things, they'll definitely kill us during the delay, no matter how short. Keiko, unequip your «One-handed Sword Skill»." We both unequipped the skill, happening to catch a glance at the state of our «Sprint» skill in the process.

"Level _Four hundred Forty-four_?" we exclaimed together. We definitely hadn't been running long enough to gain _that_ much. I shook my head. There were more important things going on now! We pressed on, arriving at the giant tower just as the monsters were about to catch us again. We both put our backs to the large surface, only a meter or so across on this side. Actually, from the side, it probably looked like a sword, befitting of the theme of SAO.

As that small thought rolled around in the back of my mind, I raised my sword, now completely under my own power, with no help from the System. All the extra strength certainly helped, as it hardly seemed to weigh anything now. I could definitely swing a blade this light as fast as I wanted. Without a hint of hesitation, the dark beings threw themselves at us, forcing us both to fling our swords out to parry, immediately throwing more slashes in hopes of actually defeating these things. If we didn't kill them, they would kill us.

Our swords flew for a few moments, frantically slashing, blocking, parrying, and attempting counterattacks against the foes, though nothing seemed to leave a mark. Any attacks which made it through their flashing, pointed claws, just seemed to slide off of their bodies without any effect whatsoever. They kept pressing forward, until we were crushed so far back, our trailing feet were pressed against the spire behind. The pace of the battle just kept increasing, strikes flying out on both sides faster and faster, pressing us back by a single centimeter at a time. We would not allow our defenses to break, even as we lost all room to move our arms.

At last, we had no room to move, and in a last ditch effort, jumped up above the monsters to gain space. They hardly seemed not notice, as their attacks just kept pounding at us, from below now. Despite being airborne, we continued to swing our blades, every attack landing against the swarm of waving claws below. Each time our weapons struck, the recoil kicked us backward, or in this case, upward. Somehow, as if to defy all laws of physics, the swarm of dark creatures climbed up the impossibly angled blade of stone, their attacks knocking us always upward, as we fought to keep ourselves faced correctly.

Totally horizontal now, our feet slid uselessly against the stone next to us, as the monsters continued to push us upward. No matter how long we fought, these things never took a break, never grew tired, nothing. Eventually, they would wear out our stamina, and then we would be done for. We had to find a way to break the stalemate before then. Except, we weren't in the sort of position to do _anything_ as we were now.

After many minutes of fighting, we finally reached the top of the stone pillar, about even with the first floor. Of course we were too far away for anyone to actually make any of this out from the edge of the floor, but what a sight it would be if they could... As we finally reached the top, our feet coming to rest on the very point of the sword-like pillar, the monsters drove up from below us. This was it, there was absolutely no more room to back up. Nowhere to go. The point of this sword was just a fraction of a meter across, and even the two of us were having trouble standing on it together.

My head swiveled as I stared all around for some way out of this. There just _had_ to be something. _Anything_. "Jump!" Keiko screamed. Without any signal from me, my body bent down low and I sprung high into the air.

—This is crazy! My hands shot out to grab at anything, but we were floating high in the empty sky. There was nothing to grab in such a situation. Imagine my surprise when my outstretched hand actually caught something.

My hands and forearms slid on some unknown object, as gravity began pulling me back down. The sword in my right hand clattered out across the empty space when I released it, coming to a stop a short distance away. My whole body left the strange ledge, with my hands catching on at the last moment. However, my downward force was a little too much and my left hand slipped off. With just might right hand holding onto the invisible surface, my grip turned to iron, as if nothing in this world of the next would be able to remove it. The leftover downward momentum of my left side pulled me halfway around, so I caught a look back down. A swarm of darkness writhed around the tip of the enormous sword, agitated at their inability to continue chasing their prey. The single point of contact the only thing that kept me from falling right into that pit of darkness.

Spinning back around, I threw my other hand up to catch the invisible ledge above me, pulling myself up with great difficulty.

Thankfully, Keiko was there beside me. I felt massively worn out as I took few tentative steps forward to retrieve my weapon. When I looked up again, I finally saw it. Nearly transparent, the area beneath my feet held a subtle glow. A ghost-like golden glow seemed to emanate from the empty space, telling me that this surface beneath us was actually very large. As my eyes followed the faint glow, I could see that this surface was actually curved, forming a spiral path, leading upward to some unknown place. This definitely wasn't a normal part of SAO. This was more like... like... an area for the people who originally made it. A «Service Area». Clearly, some bug had gotten us here. That's probably why all those traps went off and these monsters were after us. It was all designed to keep regular players out. They probably hadn't expected anyone to be so difficult to kill though.

—Or maybe they had.

"O,Onii-chan..." Keiko's frightened voice turned my head to whatever she was looking at. Down below, the swarm of dark creatures were... changing somehow. Their forms all melted together, limbs disappearing into a smooth, black substance. After a few moments, this pool of darkness stretched upward, shifting and dripping downward like some sort of molten liquid, until a recognizable form emerged.

"D,dragon?" we muttered together. The giant dark head of a dragon, with its furious eyes glowing, at us shot forward. It's mouth opened wide, finally breaking us out of our shocked stare. We threw ourselves backward as its face smashed down, spidered cracks appearing all throughout the surface beneath our feet. Oh god, it was like we were standing on glass. If it smashed through...

"Run!" I turned and ran for all I was worth, as the dragon made another attack, this time crashing through the glassy surface behind. I head shattering, and a glance back showed the whole section of platform we'd been on before break away into shimmering shards, before falling into the endless sky. More of the platform broke off from the edge. The whole structure was compromised. We kept running as more and more broke off, the only surface we had left quickly falling into space. We went round and round the winding path, frantically dodging attacks by the dragon, which broke off even more of the platform, entire segments falling away behind.

As we ran, the dragon's huge form stretched endlessly upward, until after some unknown amount of time, we reached the final, highest point of this path. Coming to a stop, we now looked out over the whole of Aincrad, from an angle that no other human being would ever see, most likely. The sun had long crossed the center of the sky and was on its way back down, telling us we had been running for some number of hours now. And it certainly felt like it. If not for the massive surge of adrenaline keeping me totally wired, I probably wouldn't be able to lift a finger for hours.

After a few moments, the massive dragon lifted its huge head up before us, completely eclipsing the sun behind. We drew our swords, now realizing that it would probably be for the final time. This wasn't an area made for players to fight through with all they had, always offering some way out. This whole thing was made purely to kill us. How had it come to this?

With a victorious roar, the dragon reared up high above us. After a moment, the large head shot downward, its huge snout intending to crush us completely. We raised our swords, crossing them above us and holding on with both hands. The blow landed across the twin weapons, a huge sonic boom ringing out all around. The immense force pushed both of us to our knees as we trembled with the effort to keep blocking the attack. Unfortunately, the system decided the force was too much for our bodies, as my hp bar slowly shrunk, bit by bit, in the corner of my vision. It pressure was so heavy, neither of us could even move to escape it, as if the whole world was crushing down on us.

"Damn it..." I muttered through clenched teeth. After nearly a minute, my hp reached the halfway point and turned yellow.

"Onii-chan, what do we do?" Keiko huffed out in a strained voice.

"Backward. We have to get out from under it," I replied, even as it felt like my arms would crush into dust if I kept this up for another second. We slid ourselves backward, millimeter by millimeter, until we were nearly out from under the snout of the massive dragon. However, our hp was just about in the red zone. We needed to get out right now, or it was over for us.

"On three, push with everything you've got! One... Two... Three!" I squeezed my eyes shut as I summoned every bit of strength this virtual body could put out, pressing upward as hard as I possibly could. With Keiko's pressure as well, we managed to equal out the force for just an instant, throwing ourselves backward as soon as we felt it. Without us to hold it back, the dragon's head smashed through the platform.

"This way!" Keiko shouted, gritting her teeth with a look that said she was in just as much pain as me. She forced her shaking legs to hold her weight again, and I did the same. However, before we were too tired, and before we could make our next move, the platform beneath us shattered.

In an instant, I felt gravity pull me downward, even as the glassy shards of the platform hovered around me. Keiko's hand shot out to catch hold of mine as we fell, pulling us together amidst the shower of shattered glass.

"These look..." Keiko said, her free hand reaching out toward the shards. Her fingers closed on one, pulling it closer. Now that I actually looked, they were just the same as the shards we had. That meant, those shards weren't a regular item we could find in the game. However, that didn't really matter anymore. We were falling through this empty sky. I couldn't even imagine living through this somehow. That would require some sort of miracle.

"No! There's a way! There has to be a way!" Keiko shouted to counter my thoughts.

"But, there's nothing here!" I shouted back, exasperated. "What is there left?"

"I don't know, but I can feel it, deep inside. There is definitely a way out of this!" I grit my teeth. I had no idea how that could be possible, but I couldn't afford to love my faith in my little sister now, of all times.

"Ok, I'm just going to believe. Let's make a miracle!"


	63. Chapter 62

**Making Miracles**** Chapter 62**

Author's Note: Double release! I just couldn't leave this part unfinished any longer! ^_^

Keiko smiled, nodding. Though neither of us had a clue exactly what we were going to do, we resolved ourselves to do it anyway. However, in the corner of my vision, I spotted darkness, raising my sword to defend before I could even comprehend what it was. Sharp claws rebounded and I went spiraling backward. As I began moving away from Keiko, we threw out our hands, clasping hands so we fly apart. All around, the dark monsters from earlier descended around us. While we'd been talking, that giant dragon had melted back into individual monsters. Lots of monsters. My arms felt like deadweight and my breathing came in ragged gasps. I was in really bad shape. I grit my teeth momentarily, then grinned.

"Can't make miracle if we die here!" with that shout, my weapon flew into motion, parrying back one attack after another, while Keiko did the same. We spun and tumbled every which way from the recoil of each strike, but never faultered. As we fell, fighting in constant motion like a dance, I spotted the spire we had climbed earlier. We fell past the blade, and from this distance I could see that it really was a sword, all the way to the hilt, which extended below the path we'd walked, and then the huge chain hanging from the end of the hilt.

As we continued to fight with all our might, more and more dark forms swirled around us. So many claws flew forth that we could hardly even counter them with both of our swords.

Suddenly, a high pitched ring. A simultaneous gasp escaped both our mouths as Keiko's sword flew away into the sky. "Sword!" the word came from her lips as the blade passed through the wall of black figures.

Then, it happened. A flash of blinding light that even stunned the dark monsters for a moment shot forth behind me. My head swiveled backward, to find a new sword, exactly like the one she had just lost, clasped between our entwined hands. Where did the sword come from? I didn't have the time to think about something like that, because the monsters recovered, a swarm of claws striking forth again. Rebounding my blade off of those in front of me, I sent us into a spin, striking out to stun the ones on Keiko's side while she switched hands.

Once the blade was in her right hand, we went back to our flailing, crazy fighting as we continued to fall. We fell while fighting for one minute, then two. Without warning, all the attacks stopped. The dark swarm around us changed form again, this time all forming together. In a few moments, all light was blocked out. It was like back in that dark area, where it was almost as if we were blind.

Since their attacks had stopped, I shouted, "Keiko, where did that sword come from?"

"I don't know. The only thing I had in my hand was that shard I grabbed earlier!"

"Shard?" In this darkness, the only thing I could see were the many of the small, glowing shards which were still falling with us. "The shards?" However, before that train of thought could continue any further, I felt a heavy pressure all around. The darkness was pressing inward, shrinking around us. Realizing that they were going to crush us, we both struck out, but we couldn't even see what we were attacking anymore. I felt my sword strike something smooth, but the hardness of the surface felt like an «Immortal Object». "Damn!" The pressure increased until it became an unbearable.

Then, I felt it. Just like earlier, there was that instant before all the space crushed in. However, there was nothing we could do to avoid it this time. All at once, I felt everything crush in around me, until all space became nothing-

With a massive shattering sound, the darkness vanished. I looked down, to see that I was still there. Something had saved us at the last possible instant. I looked back up to see a strange wavering place in the air above us. Before we fell too far away, I could make out the words, written in SAO's system font. 『World Border』 repeated over and over in the space. "Seriously?" I had heard that the guy who threw himself over the side of Aincrad had 『Falling In Midair』 written as his cause of death on the pillar listing all the players and their cause of death. He must have fallen to the «World Border» and died when he hit it. So, how did we pass through? Was it because we hit it exactly when all the space around us was compressed into nothing? Was that even possible? However it happened, we had clearly just passed the end of SAO's game world. Of course, the most obvious question ever came from both of our mouths.

"W_here the hell are we now?"_

When we looked down, instead of endless sky, there was now a completely new scene below. Not very different from the largest sections of Aincrad's first floor, a forest unlike anything I'd everseen stretched infinitely in all directions, with countless patches of flat green and blue indicating fields and lakes scattered throughout.

No matter where we were, if we kept falling like this, we would definitely die. While the ground appeared to be far in the distance now, we were falling at an unimaginable speed. We would hit it before long, so we had to figure out some way out of this before then. At least we weren't under attack anymore, that certainly helped. However, without the massive massive rush that came with combat, I was already starting to feel sluggish.

No, I had to think! There was something I was still missing. I stared my sword. Sword... Sword... Keiko's sword had flown away, I saw it with my own eyes. The new sword in her hand had appeared in a flash of light. But the only thing was one of those shards. The shards... Just like the ones we had. Those shards which would emit light if you told them to. They made up those invisible surfaces. They could emit light on command. Keiko had called out for a sword right before her current one had appeared. So, they responded to voice commands?

Have to think faster, I urged myself. We were nearly at the treetops already. We were moving horizontally pretty fast, so we would probably land in a nearby field, but that gave us just as dozen more seconds or so. Come on, think...

If the shards could form into a sword on command, could they make other items? What item could get us out of this mess? I doubted there was anything like a parachute in SAO, and stupid things like a giant trampoline were out... As my brain worked in overdrive, a memory which had laid long-buried in the back of my mind appeared, playing before my eyes.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

We were walking with Klein, as he explained the way combat worked in SAO. He was trying to explain how monsters chose a target, based on who had dealt the most damage within the last few seconds. Though, there were also some skills players would take later on which would allow them to intentionally draw monster aggro. Keiko asked why anyone would try to make a monster attack them.

"Well, if one player has really heavy armor and a lot of hp, they would rather take the attacks than the lighter armored players," he explained, "it's especially useful for fighting bosses later on when they are super strong. All of the tanks- those are high armor players- will use skills to draw aggro and distract the boss, while all of the heavy damage dealers attack to take the boss down."

"Why would they do that instead of just attacking the boss from far away?" I asked. If the boss couldn't get to them, no one would even get hurt.

"Well, Sword Art Online is all about swords. That's why they made the whole Sword Skill System. The only forms of long range attack in this game are throwing weapons, which aren't very strong, so they're not much use against the heavily armored bosses. Also, they have a short range, only around fifteen meters or so."

"Wait, but this world seems so... magical? I guess that's the right word. So, there isn't any kind of, well, magical stuff?" Keiko asked with a confused look.

"Actually, yeah. Everyone was really surprised. Magic is a big element in almost every other MMO, but they decided to leave it out of SAO. Instead, they made it all about Sword Skills. Kind of reminds me of something Kirito said the other day, something like 'it feels much better to fight with your own body, right?' or something like that anyway. Basically, they were trying to capitalize on this being the first VRMMO, so they made everything physical. There's no long range magic that you just shoot at someone. You have to go in with your own body to fight."

"Wow, so there's really no magic at all?" I gaped.

"Well, not entirely. The only magic are these crystals. There are a number of different kinds, all with different colors. Like healing crystals, status healing crystals, stuff like that. Mmm, well there are also the «Teleport Gates», though I guess those aren't exactly crystals, but they are similar. Well, there are teleport crystals to get to the «Teleport Gates» at least. Although, all the crystals are super, _super_ expensive, and you can only get them on the higher floors."

"I see..." we nodded, before he got back into different types of skills...

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"That's it!" I gasped. "Magic, that's our miracle!" To glow with their own light and be able to transform, these shards must be a type of crystal. They were magical, so they would be able to transform into magical objects. And there was just one magical item we needed right now.

I swept my tattered cloak out to scoop up all the shards within reach and shouted, "Teleport Crystal!" With another blinding flash a number of the shards disappeared, replaced by a single blue object. It had four sides and appeared to glow with an inner light. After sweeping the rest of the shards into my menu, not even bothering to switch to my inventory first, I grabbed the cystal, spinning in midair to face Keiko. I held the crystal out between us and we clasped hands around it. With a glance at the ground, I saw we just had a few moments left. We grinned at each other.

"Teleport: «Urbus»!" we screamed together. After an moment, the blue light whisked us away.

I saw the city appear around me, but at that same instant, I realized that going through a «Teleport Gate» didn't negate momentum. We hit the ground, I'm not even sure which way, and I heard a cacophony of noise that I can't even describe. It was like the whole world exploded all at once. I saw the sky and the ground at what seemed like the same time, feeling myself blast through many multiple things, then everything came to a sudden halt and I blacked out.

I blinked my eyes a few times. It was apparent that I'd only been out for a moment, probably from the massive surge of pain. My eyes scanned around, seeing many players standing stock-still, all staring at me. There were a lot more players strewn all over the ground. Probably all those things I hit... When I tried the pick myself back up, I realized that I was burried in the wall of a shop. Apparently, I'd hit it hard enough that the whole wall had turned to a purple mass of 『Immortal Object』 messages. However, even that hadn't been enough to keep me from putting a nice hole in the side of it. I managed to pull myself out of the wall, which immediately repaired itself, and started to take a step forward. Of course, as soon as I tried to put weight on my right leg, I fell flat on my face.

As I tried to get up, I realized that while my virtual body hadn't actually lost any hp, _I_ was seriously injured. I managed to drag myself forward enough that when I looked around, I finally saw Keiko. Unsurprisingly, she had landed on top of some guy, and was slowly making her way back up on shaky legs. She limped over to me, grinning the whole time.

"Operation Miracle, success!" she laughed, while everyone in the crowd looked even more baffled than before. I shot her back a grin.

"There you guys are! I've been looking all over for-" a familiar voice called out. As one, the crowd cleared a path for the small player who walked right over to us.

"Asuna-san?" we asked together.

"What happened to you guys?" she asked with a look of total shock. "After you fell off that bridge, I didn't hear from you since! Do you realize how worried I was? I went all the way back to the first floor to check the monument in the black Iron Castle to check if you were still alive!"

That's right, the last time we saw her was when we fell off that bridge... we had gotten caught up in so many things since then, I'd completely forgotten about that. "Even the friend locator wouldn't work, it just marked your positions randomly all across the floor, and then they disappeared completely! Well, let's just get you two cleaned up some. I'm currently staying with a friend. He has a big place, so I'm sure he'll be fine with helping you two out." She quickly helped drag me to my feet, though I could hardly help at all. In fact, I weighed too much for her to even carry, so she had to call on one of the nearby players to help out.

Strangely enough, it was a face I recognized. That tall foreigner with dark skin, who looked built like a tank, even without armor or weapons. Name was Agil if I remembered correctly. Apparently, he had increased his STR stat a lot, because he easily picked us both up and carried us behind Asuna, through the town until we came to a house. However, the adrenaline rush wore off completely at that point, and I only saw the front of the building before everything faded completely to darkness.

Author's Note: OMG I was so motivated to write today! Even stayed up a bit later than I should have...


	64. Chapter 63

** Haze Chapter 63**

Author Note: I'm feeling... meh. I'll leave writing this chapter for tomorrow.

Gradually, I began to feel gravity pulling on my virtual body. It was the first feeling that came with waking up, as my mind connected with my body again. On some level, I was aware of this, and automatically tried to finish waking up. My eyes slowly opened, staring at a blurry ceiling. I had to focus for a few moments before it became clear. As soon as I managed to sit myself upright, I swung my legs over the side of the bed, slipping from under the covers, and pushed myself off the bed. My view of the room rose as I stood, then started swinging downward. I crashed to the floor with a bang. After a few seconds of pain, I started to stand again. How long had I been asleep for? I fell backward, my butt landing on the edge of the bed, and turned halfway around to look at Keiko, still asleep.

I pulled open my menu to check the time. 1:33 pm. Why didn't this thing give the date? "Hey Keiko, wake up," I said gently while shaking her shoulder a bit. Her eyes slowly opened and she woke up with a big yawn. We both took a few minutes just to muster the strength to stand, then we got up and dressed, though cloaks were missing from our inventory. All four of them. So, we just put on the green top and blue skirt, with our boots, and slowly walked out of the strange room we had woken up in. As expected of the large sized room, it was a private room above an NPC shop. We shut the door behind us, staggering into the street. Despite this all being inside a game, and our hp being full, we both felt so weak. We were totally exhausted, even though we had just been sleeping.

I looked around, but there was no one on the street. Middle of the afternoon, not that surprising. Still, if we looked around, we'd find a straggler or two. They would know what day it was. We walked down the road toward the town center as that would be the most likely place to find other people. We both walked with a hand on the wall to steady ourselves. Even though players didn't need to breath, our breath came in shallow huffs. After some number of minutes walking, we made it to the central plaza, an open area with the «Teleport Gate» in the middle.

It was strange, there were a lot of people in the plaza. They all should have been out hunting. So, what were they doing here? We slowly plodded forward on shaky legs, out toward the crowd at the center of the field. I reached one person, grabbing his shoulder. He turned around, starting to say something, but stopped when he saw me, his mouth flapping open and closed a few times.

"What day is it?" I asked in a weak voice, only managing to hold myself up because of the hand on his shoulder.

"A,are you guys ok?!" he asked with a shocked face. However, at that moment, a huge uproar exploded through the plaza. The young man looked back and forth between us and something behind him, conflicted. Then, he made an 'aha' sound. "Come on, I'll bring you this way." He wrapped one arm under each of us to give us some support while we all walked toward forward, like everyone else in the plaza. From the looks of it, everyone was going through the «Teleport Gate». Somehow, I had no idea what that meant. Really, it should have been obvious, but when I tried to think 'why would everyone go toward the gate at the same time, I drew a complete blank. When we arrived at the gate, the man stopped for a moment.

He smiled, a smile filled with sheer happiness and pride, then shouted, "Teleport: «Serof»!"

Without warning, the scene before my eyes changed radically. Instead of a rocky town at the bottom of a crater, in a now-empty square, noise and excitement exploded all around. There were people everywhere, and instead of rock, everything was green. Giant trees everywhere. Everything seemed to blur in front of my eyes as I felt everything starting to overload my senses. The guy helping set us both down against a nearby building, saying he would go find some help. As we sat there waiting, I opened my menu again. I pulled up my character menu to check my stats. Did something go wrong with them? Maybe that would explain the way I felt?

When the character window opened, my eyes stared blankly at the screen before me, not quite able to understand what I was reading.

『Available Points: 0』

『Strength: 9999999』

『Agility: 9999999』

The stats were some number so large that only the first seven digits fit, the rest falling off the side of the window. I waved away the menu screen and glanced up into the corner of my vision to check my hp. 『9999999999999』 It didn't even show how much I had compared to my maximum, since the first value alone passed the end of the space where hp was shown. While I should probably be really freaked out seeing such a thing, I just couldn't find the will to care.

While those thoughts trickled through my hazy mind, I stared out through the crowd, seeing faces I recognized. Strangely, they were in a line, with many people approaching and bowing as if to say thanks. In that line, I saw Agil, Heathcliff, Klein with his men... While my eyes traveled further, I noticed that Kibaou was there too, but not the black-haired boy, Asuna, or Diabel. Argo was probably around here somewhere, though I didn't see her amongst the crowd.

I saw the guy who'd helped us walk up to the line of players and bow, like the others, but then start speaking. He pointed in our direction, and Heathcliff, the closest person to the young man, looked over at us through the crowd. I raised a hand, managing to wave weakly at him. He immediately pulled away from the rest of the assembly and came toward us.

"What are you two doing here? You shouldn't even be out of bed!" He scolded us in a harsh tone.

"Huh?" was our only response to him. Why would we be in bed?

"Come on, you two are really sick, you need to get rest." He picked us both up from the ground, throwing us over his each of his shoulders and walking away from the commotion in the square.

As he walked, I asked, "Heathcliff-san, what day is it?"

"Saturday, December seventeenth, two thousand twenty-two."

He walked into the first inn he came to, buying a room and walking upstairs, plopping us down on the bed and commanding us to go back to sleep.

Even though we'd just woken up, feeling the rather soft mattress beneath me, it suddenly sounded like a really good idea.

"Good night..." we both mumbled together. That was the last thing I remembered before my consciousness faded to black again.

Author's Note: To help clarify, they made it to floor 2 on December 6, so it took them 11 days to clear the second floor.

Oh, and Second Floor clear already! It only took 13 chapters this time!


	65. Chapter 64

**A Strange Message**** Chapter 64**

Slowly, I felt myself rise from unconsciousness. My eyes opened a bit, a bright dot of yellow in my vision drawing my attention. It took a number of seconds to focus on it, until I could tell it was the new message indicator. Someone must have sent me a message while I was asleep. As I stared at the little yellow bubble, I wondered, when did I fall asleep anyway? What was I doing? I tried to lift my hand and it responded. Wait, why would I expect it not to? I tapped the little floating button and a chorus of chimes rang through the silence.

The yellow icon disappeared, a long message appearing a moment later. Who had sent it? I looked at the top line where it identified the sender. There were only four people on my friends list, greatly limiting the number of people who could send me messages. However, the name I read was obviously none of them. 『Admin』 Kayaba Akihiko? The madman running this entire madhouse of a Death Game sent me a message? Really? _Really_?!

『I have left a message for when you wake up- to inform you that your character data has been』

『rewritten. For some reason, half of your character data disappeared. (This goes for both of you, since』

『 your characters are produced from one file.) The other half was compressed to 0.05% of it's original』

『size, so when I managed to get it all decompressed, the vast majority of it was corrupted. What was』

『 intact quickly started degrading as well, so I was forced to turn you both into Immortal Objects for a』

『 period of time, in order to keep the System from deleting you. If you had remained in that state for a』

『few more hours, you wouldn't have died, you would have _disappeared_. Luckily for you, your』

『connection to your Nerve Gear was only interrupted for a short period of time, as the Cardinal System』

『 is capable of figuring out badly corrupted data quite well. After protecting you from sudden death or』

『deletion, it took three days for me to personally rewrite your entire character data file. Of course, there』

『will be differences since I don't know exactly what state your characters were in beforehand. Also,』

『 there were a number of things that I was incapable of fixing, since the protocols for creating them no』

『longer exist. In particular, the Pain Dampening system and Digital Focusing System are now unlinked』

『from your characters. There was nothing to be done about the former problem, though the change 』

『should be minor as that system was already partially broken on your characters to begin with. As for』

『the latter, I increased your bandwidth allocation to compensate, though it will probably take a number』

『of days before your brain can process all the data without you getting a headache. The most important』

『error to keep in mind is that System Assist on Sword Skills will no longer function as intended, though』

『I cannot be sure exactly how it will function. You will just have to find that out on your own. There are』

『a number of other systems that are either partially or completely broken on your characters, though』

『they are far too numerous to list here. Though there are a few you may interact with regularly, so be』

『careful with the Criminal Code, the Ethics Code, NPCs, and Immortal Objects. They will not function』

『as expected, and some may not function at all. Your names have also been erased from the monument』

『of life, though that may not be of much importance at the moment. Now that I have covered all the』

『changes and errors, I would advise you _do not do whatever you did to cause them again_. Though, I』

『have no idea what you did exactly, as all logs even remotely related to you for the entirety of Sword』

『Art Online's service are now corrupted. I would recommend that instead of causing trouble, talk to』

『NPCs and learn about the lore behind Aincrad instead, it will be a more constructive use of time. That』

『is all. When you have finished reading this message, you will be transported to a safe location.』

After reading the entire message twice, then three times, I continued to stare at the words blankly. I took note of the various systems mentioned in the message, so I could ask Argo later what they were. One name stuck out in particular, as if it was pulling at a strand of memory that I couldn't quite pick out. The Cardinal System. When I thought of that name, the thought, 'like a bird?' repeated in my mind over and over again. But why?

Then, I realized I was alone. For the first time in forever, Keiko wasn't by my side. For that matter, there was nothing around me. I was lying on a bed with nothing around. That must be why I would be transported when I closed the message. Among the list of issues and problems, the one line that didn't seem to belong came near the end. Why would Kayaba Akihiko himself suggest learning about the lore of Aincrad? Though, the way he said it made it sound like he meant 'don't break my game any more.' Hmm...

After thinking for a minute or so more, I closed the message. A bright light covered my vision, turning my entire surroundings white. A series of colors flew past, and for the second time, I saw the floating words:

『Welcome To Sword Art Online!』

I frowned. Was it really necessary to welcome me again? I hadn't even logged out. Hell, I couldn't log out if I wanted to. After the whole area faded to black, I blinked, the entire world appearing around me in an instant.

"Guh!" I collapsed to one knee, holding my forehead as my head felt like it caught fire. He'd mentioned headaches. They were related to something called the «Digital Focusing System»... With one eye open, I looked around as everything felt like it was pounding against my eyes. It was like my vision had been sharpened a million times over. I could see every grain of wood and every pebble on the ground, no matter where I looked. Wait, digital, focus, system. A system that had to do with focusing? Then, it must be what made things more clear when I focused on them. I'd never payed much attention to it, but there were a couple times I noticed things get clearer and more defined when I stared at them.

So, having that broken made everything show at maximum clarity all the time? No wonder why he expected me to get headaches. Taking in all this information was probably way past the level of 'safe'. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bothered to create the system in the first place.

I pushed myself up with my free right hand, noting the scratching feeling of the rocks on the ground against my palm. Apparently, the pain dampening system controlled more than just pain, since the feeling of rocks against my hand were much more pronounced and exact. Basically, it felt more 'real' now. Without all those extra systems acting between me and the game world, everything was more precise than before. Swaying slightly on my feet as I stood, I looked around. I was in a city, that much was obvious. Judging by the style of the buildings it was «Starting City». I looked down at myself. Apparently, having all my character data recreated from scratch didn't get me back in a boy's body. However, I wasn't as worried about that as I was with my clothes.

Or, more precisely, my lack of clothes. I quickly swiped to open my menu, but nothing happened. Was that broken too? No, something like that would definitely get put at the top of a list of errors. I swiped my right hand downward, forefinger and thumb pressed together, repeatedly, but still failed to open my menu. As I stared at my right hand in confusion, another message appeared in my vision, this one opening on it's own, without me even pressing the button.

『Admin』

『Oh yeah, forgot to mention that all right-handed functions were broken, so I remapped everything to』

『system entity default- that is, with the left hand. One more thing, while I shouldn't have to say this, I 』

『am talking to _you._ Do not tell anyone that I messaged you, it's definitely a bad idea.』

Slowly pressing the two fingers of my left hand together, I swiped downward clumsily. The system menu opened, and I tapped the items icon, then the button to open my equipment menu. My basic clothes were listed, and I quickly equipped them. Now that I was dressed at least, I looked around.

Where's Keiko?


	66. Chapter 65

**Early Morning Discussion Chapter 65**

Author Note: I figured this warranted a response within the chapter, so everyone could see it:

To ReaderWorm101's review on chapter 64: Thank you for reading my story, (and this goes for ALL of you), I love writing it and continue to write (almost) every day partly because I have people who want to read my story, and that is pretty much the best feeling ever. Also, about the skill «Flash», sadly, LoL was exactly what I was thinking about when I named it. 0 for creativity on my part there. T-T Also, about a Keiko POV, I've been considering it for a while, but haven't been sure exactly how I would go about doing it.

But anyway, I hope you all enjoy the next chapter as well!

I could still recall everything we had been through in those past couple days with incredible clarity. At least it hadn't all vanished into another strange abyss of anmesia. So, while Kayaba hadn't been able to figure out just what we did, I least I could still remember myself. I walked over to a nearby bench and sat down. Knowing Keiko, she was taking a couple minutes longer than me to wake up. And since she wasn't actually here for once, I couldn't just wake her up myself. I'd just have to wait.

In the meantime, I opened my menu. It still felt really weird doing it with my left hand, after a month and... how long exactly? Right before I fell asleep that last time, when I was with Heathcliff, he'd said it was the seventeenth. Actually, hadn't he also said it was Saturday? He actually managed to keep track of what day of the week it was for the last month and a couple weeks? Well, a lot of people probably still treated this world as some temporary, imaginary thing, and clung to the real world with everything they had. What had it taken, the first day or two before I'd just accepted this place?

Well, if it was the seventeenth then, and then we went through three days of, err, what was the term? Ah, 'debugging', that was it, I reminded myself. So, today should be the twentieth. And if I was also recalling this correctly, we'd cleared the second floor too. I pulled up the floor map to check the name of the next city, but the map was buggy. Instead of just showing the first three floors, it showed all one hundred. Although, when I brought up any floors besides the currently open ones, no map was displayed. I shrugged and opened the third floor map, which was blank except for the name of the capital city on that floor. «Serof».

I nodded, then switched to the character tab. Time to see how our character stats had been screwed with this time. First came skills. I opened the skills menu and started to read down the list. However, there was no list to read. Each of the skill slots were blank, but had a 『100』 next to them. Did that mean I could equip any skill there, and it would already be level 100? Of course, the exception was «Blessed Twins», still there, still level 1, just like always. Actually, «One-handed Sword» and «Weapon Throwing» had been only slightly above level 100, so we weren't getting set back very far. However, that last time we checked «Sprint», while we were running for our lives, hadn't it been like level 300 or 400 or something? How had that happened anyway?

Well, it didn't matter now, since it would be 100 once I set it again. And really, I did intend to set the same skills. While we had this unique opportunity to change all our skills without having to retrain them all over again, we'd chosen those ones because they were useful. And a high skill level could never replace the actual experience of using the skill enough to get it there.

I figured I'd set my skills again once Keiko got here, and glanced up to see that the plaza was still empty. Another glance to the top right corner of my menu, above the window which was currently blank but would show a description of any skill selected, and I checked the time. 4:11 am. Figures why there was no one out here now. And why it was so dark... I shook my head, but regretted it when the sudden motion sent a throb through my head from my growing headache.

I rubbed my temple while switching over to the status tab and opening my character stats. And my level is... I thought, then looked down to read.

『Level 12』Again, not as bad as last time. I'd only lost three levels, which I would quickly be able to regain. However he'd done it, by level average or whatever... Actually, he probably just knew we had 3 skill slots(again, not counting the weird «Blessed Twins» slot) so he knew we had to be at least level 12. Whatever, those levels could be recovered in no time.

As for our stats, they had been reset to 0, and I had 36 available points. A normal amount for level 12. So, we would definitely be weaker than before. I shrugged it off. We would regain all the stuff we'd lost given enough time. And in this world, we definitely had enough time, given the 98% we had still to clear. Again, I left that to do until after Keiko showed up, and closed my menu. Then, I just closed my eyes and leaned my head back, giving my brain a break from the massive strain all the extra visual detail placed on it. In a couple of minutes, I heard a pained gasp, just as I'd been expecting.

I opened my eyes to see Keiko standing over near where I'd appeared. I waved at her, but then realized that she was dressed only in her underwear as I was, and reminded her to get dressed again. While I turned away, she quickly dressed herself and walked over.

"So, we're level twelve now, with the correct number of points, and all our skills have been set to level 100," I explained everything I'd figured out in a single sentence.

"What about our items?" Keiko asked, and I realized I hadn't thought about that.

"Actually, I forgot that. I don't know." We both opened our inventory to see what was there. The fifteen «Wolf-tooth Sword +7s» were there, as well as the «Anneal Blades» and our clothes, but no trash mats or anything. Strangely, there were still the sixteen «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I's». Our armor, cloaks, and throwing needles were gone, as well as most of our Col. The total between us now stood at fifty-thousand, a small fraction of what we'd had previously. Adding an extra zero at the end would put it much closer to its former value.

"Damn, looks like our inventory took the most damage this time..." I mumbled. We'd have to go and buy another full set of armor. Those things weren't cheap. Especially since we would be going to the third floor, where everything would surely be more expensive than before.

"Well, sitting here won't get us back up to speed, let's get going," Keiko said decisively. I nodded and we stood up together, walking over to the nearby «Teleport Gate». With my strangely detailed view, I could see every one of the intricate lines swirling across the face of each interlocked metal plate comprising the arch. We stepped into the middle and I grabbed Keiko's hand, since I knew the city name already.

"Teleport: «Serof»!"

Author's Note: Not much this time really, but they're getting going again. And Kayaba really likes resetting their stats. :P

Also, as far as 0 creativity for names goes, Serof is Forest backward, minus the 't'. *Dies*

One more thing. I just fixed all the messed up/forgotten titles throughout the story(except chapter 6).


	67. Chapter 66

**New Equipment**** Chapter 66**

Note: Ok, so, I was really busy, and only managed to find the time to write this chapter out on my phone, but couldn't post it because the copy/paste on my phone didn't work for some reason. Then I got really sick, so this is the first chance I've had to get on my computer and post the chapter. -_-;

Author's Note: I can't get any time to write when people keep asking me to do them favors, so I'm writing this on my phone so I don't expect much.-_-

After we landed in «Serof», we asked around for a good shop. It was probably because we didn't have a single piece of combat equipment on that everyone looked at us weird and asked if we could even equip the stuff on this level. We quickly assured them we were fine, but even so, we had to ask three people before one would actually tell us where a good shop was. We made our way though the unfamiliar streets until we reached a building with a 『Shop』 sign outside. We walked into the relatively lively store and waded through the dumbfounded boys inside.

"Can we buy something?" Kieko asked the npc behind counter.

"You expect me to sell dangerous weapons to little kids? No way." The shopkeeper said, crossing his arms. Everyone stared for a minute.

"What?" was the only thought that I could force out of my mouth.

"You heard me. No means no." Without further conversation, he shooed us out of the shop. Over the next few hours, we checked the rest of the npc shops in town, but any that sold weapons or armor refused to sell even show us the shop menu.

"What are we supposed to do now?" I asked rhetorically, but it turned out Keiko had an answer. "Let's check a player shop, there are more in this town than on the second floor." Player shops? I looked around, noticing the few «Vendor's Carpets» lying near the walls of buildings for the first time. We approached one carpet nearby and asked the guy sitting on the mat what he was selling. "I'm not sure your levels are high enough for my equipment..."

"We won't know until we check." Keiko snapped back before I could. We were both fed up with being looked down on by everyone we met all day, npc's included!

"Well, I have some one and two-handed swords I made, some heavy armor, and a few mob dropped items from the last dungeon."

"Our swords should still be useable for now, what we need is some light armor. Any leather?"

"Sorry, I work with metals. I don't have any leather armor."

"What about mob drops?" I asked. He just shook his head.

After a few seconds, Keiko asked, "You just said you made the weapons and armor yourself. That means you're a smith? How does that work?"

The young man looked around and apparently found the street empty enough to delve into a conversation, because he explained, "There are a couple different skills for making different types of items. I have «metalworking», which allows me to make swords, daggers, and other metal items like heavy and plate armor." We both nodded as he spoke. "There are a few other skill types which allow you to make other weapon and armor types, as well as a few specialized skills like «metal refining»."

"What does that one do?" I asked when he didn't go on. "Well, that one allows you to combine lower level metal ores to form stronger ones."

"And stronger ore makes stronger weapons," Keiko figured.

"That's right," he nodded.

After a few seconds of silence, "Onii-chan, Keiko said, "let's do that."

"Do what?" I asked, not sure what she was talking about. Her next words surprised both me and the smith sitting on his carpet in front of us.

"Let's be smiths."

Author's Note: ok, phone's about to die. Sorry for the lack of, well, anything good. I'll fix up all the marking and stuff when I can get back to my computer.


	68. Chapter 67

**New Skills**** Chapter 67**

"So..." I started slowly, "just how are we going to become smiths exactly?" We had retreated to a small side-alley to discuss her plan. Not to mention the shade provided helped to keep my headache from getting any worse.

"Well, I just thought of something. You know how in that letter, _he_ said that our character data was connected? I was thinking, what about our skills? I mean, they always leleved up at the same rate, so maybe the skills are shared between us."

"You mean..." but I couldn't quite figure out her thoughts yet.

"I mean, if you equip a skill, it might be available for both of us," she explained.

"Really? I hadn't thought of that..." I stared at the wall while thinking. If skills were shared, we would be able to equip a lot more than normal. But, we needed to figure out if her theory was correct or not first. And to do that...

"And to figure that out," she picked up the end of my thought, "I say you equip «One-handed Sword» in your first slot, since we definitely need that one again, and we see if I can use Sword Skills too." Wow, she had this surprisingly well thought out. "Well, why do you think I sleep longer than you?" she answered my thoughts again. "That's when I come up with my best ideas!"

"..."

"What?"

"I just thought you were being lazy," I said flatly.

"Onii-chan you meanie!" Keiko yelled back, flailing her arms around angrily.

After a little more discussion, we headed a short distance outside the city, to a small grove without monsters or players anywhere to be found. Taking a closer look this time, all of the «Wolf-tooth Swords» in our inventories were different than before. While we still had the swords, all the reinforcements had been changed. Kayaba probably had to recreate them from memory, so my guess was that he just chose at random. The closest to our previous swords were a couple with 4S3D Reinforcements, so we chose those.

Of course, it came a big surprise when we drew our swords and immediately collapsed from the weight. After checking the weapons' menus, we found that they required nine points of STR to wield. We currently had none at all, so the swords felt like they weighed a few tons each. After putting the nine points into strength, we added twenty of our remaining twenty-seven to Agility. That left seven points in case we needed them for something, like adjusting the weight of our swords. After we drew our blades again, as expected, we both added another two points to Strength in order for the weight to feel right in our hands. That left us with eleven STR and twenty AGI, with five points left over. Not as strong as we used to be, but it was a start.

"Ok, I'm setting «One-handed Sword» in my first skill slot now." I tapped the skill and the description appeared in the far right window. At the bottom of that window, I pressed a finger to the 『Equip』 button and the skill appeared in my first skill slot. "Ok, done, how is it?" Keiko brought her sword up above her shoulder in a motion that had become completely natural after the thousands of times we'd done it. Her hand sat in the exact position for a «Slant».

"I don't feel the System Assist, darn. I was really hoping I was right..." As she spoke, I brought my right hand up to the same position, but even though I had the skill equipped, I didn't feel the System Assist activate either.

"This isn't good, I can't activate Sword Skills either..." I said, but as my voice trailed off, something occurred to me. "Wait, didn't _he_ say that all 'right hand functions' were broken? Do you think that means we're left-handed now?"

"Only one way to find out," Keiko commented back. We swapped our swords to our other hands and brought them back up to the same spot again, though this time it took a while of fiddling around with the position before the sword was in the right spot. It was just like the first time we'd tried to use a Sword Skill. Only this time, even when I was pretty sure I had my sword positioned right, I still didn't feel the System helping out at all.

"No good," I noted.

"Wait wait wait- didn't _he_ also say something like 'Sword Skills won't function as expected' or something like that?" I nodded twice. That was right, he'd mentioned Sword Skills specifically. So, they probably didn't fall under 'right-handed stuff'. Tossing my sword back into my right hand, I brought it up and slashed downward, across the front in a fluid motion. It was nothing like a Sword Skill, but the attack didn't seem that bad. I brought my sword up over my head into a «Vertical» position, and hesitated a moment. I let out a breath, slicing straight down as fast as I could. This time, a faint glow hovered in the air for a moment after my attack. The telltale sign of a Sword Skill.

"I see, so that's what _he_ meant..." Keiko mumbled, while watching.

Having already followed her train of thought, I sighed, "so, now we have to use Sword Skills without the System Assist? Does this guy hate us, or does he just think we're stupid? Of course we can't do that. That's the whole reason Sword Skills are stronger than regular attacks in the first place. Because, they have the system assist working with them..."

"Ah, but you're forgetting one important thing," Keiko teasingly. She was keeping her mind clear so I couldn't read what she meant.

"Ok, and what is that?"

"Don't you remember what that black-haired boy said? If you practice enough, you'll eventually get good enough to attack as fast as Sword Skills without the System Assist. You saw his attacks, he definitely wasn't wrong. So, we'll just have to learn to do that now, won't we?" I nodded slowly. Wasn't that back when I'd asked him how his attacks were so strong? He'd told us to practice Sword Skills without «One-handed Sword» equipped, and when our attack looked the same as a Sword Skill, using it with the System Assist would make it a lot stronger. While we hadn't really taken him seriously back then, we didn't really have a choice this time.

"Well then, the only thing left is..." Keiko said in a low voice while she brought her sword across in front of her, holding it pointed out from the «Horizontal» position. Pushing out a forceful breath, she slashed her sword directly in front of her, a faint glow emanating from her sword.

"Looks like your idea was right. So, what skills are we getting?" I asked with a grin.


	69. Chapter 68

**Retraining**** Chapter 68**

Author's Note: I finally found an SAO font online. ^_^

For the next hour or so, we discussed our plan for how we would move forward. As it stood, we had six skill slots between us, five of which were still unfilled. One would definitely be going to «Sprint», but both agreed that we probably shouldn't use «Weapon Throwing» anymore. While it was very helpful before, we had a big problem now. No more System Assist. Without the Assist, I don't think the skill would even be remotely useable. We still intended to use a high AGI build with light armor, but without «Weapon Throwing», our left hands wouldn't be useful for anything if we didn't equip shields. Neither of us liked the idea of a shield, because they would slow us down, which was a bad idea without heavy armor and a lot of STR for the increased defensive stats.

These problems left us in a bind. How do we make use of our left hands without slowing us down? We considered trying to dual wield swords, but without any assistance, two swords were even worse than one, so we quickly gave up on the idea.

"Oh man, it's just like that one guy with the two-handed sword. We're going to have to come up with some way to minimize on trade-offs," Keiko said, as we lay down staring at the canopy of leaves overhead. We were positioned so that the tops of our heads almost touched, with our feet pointed in opposite directions while we talked.

"Then, how about a different weapon type?" I asked. Operating the menu above my head, I opened up the menu of skills and set the filters to only show weapon skills. I read down the list to see if there were any that sounded good to use in our left hands. Most everything listed were regular weapons like blunt, spears, and swords. The only few that stuck our were whips and daggers. Although, I hadn't seen any whips anywhere, so they probably weren't the best idea. That just left daggers. "Daggers maybe?" They might work, they were smaller and lighter than regular swords. Using one as an off-hand weapon might not be too hard. Of course, we would have to buy some daggers first.

After Keiko agreed, we walked back into the city and looked around until we found a player selling some cheap low-level daggers. We bought two 『Iron Daggers』 at two thousand Col each and thanked the young man running the shop. Back out of the city, we stood again in the little clearing between the trees to test the daggers.

After equipping the swords to our right hands and daggers in our left, we stood, giving each a couple test swings. I d "Not too bad, what do you think?" Keiko asked, looking over her shoulder.

"Yeah, I think I could get used to this." I swung my sword through a few attacks, though not as good as Sword Skills, then turned and flashed my left hand our a few times. I didn't know any dagger skills, but the speed seemed pretty good compared to my sword. Keiko equipped «Dagger» in her first skill slot and we read through the available Sword Skills. Surprisingly, the first few were the same basic attacks the «One-handed Sword» skill. Although, nothing was familiar after those.

"So, «Linear», «Crescent», «Swift Cut», «Edge Thrust», «Double Undercut», and «Lasher»..." Keiko muttered their names. She tapped them each in turn and we watched the animation depicting their use closely. Now that the System Assist wouldn't kick in to tell us we had successfully activated the Sword Skill, it would be a lot harder to learn new ones. From the pictures, «Linear» was a basic thrust attack; «Crescent» was a spinning attack which could land two hits, much like «Whirl», a similar skill for one-handed swords; and «Swift Cut» was a charge type skill ending in two fast upward swings. «Edge Thrust» looked like a «Horizontal», followed by a half spin and a backward stab; «Double Undercut» was two upward slanted cuts with the dagger held from a backhanded position; and «Lasher» was a three hit attack made of two downward slants, then one strong looking attack straight upward.

"It's going to take a while to learn all these new skills," I noted.

Keiko nodded, "I think we're going to fall behind the fronline for a little while."

"Probably, but we'll catch up like we always do. Come on, let's get training."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Keiko sighed, "we can't start being smiths if we can't kill the monsters we need to get materials, can we?" I nodded.

"So, how do we go about this?" I asked. We'd hunted mobs for the longest time now, but I didn't actually know how we were supposed to practice just swinging our swords.

"Well, I used to have a friend in the Kendo club. I went by there a couple times, and it looked like everyone just swung their swords over and over, making the exact same motion every time."

"Hmm, you think that will work?" I asked.

"I guess so. I think the important thing to remember is that we aren't under the same restrictions as the real world. The only limit to how fast or strong we can attack are based on our character's stats. As long as we can hold these swords, we can attack as fast as any Sword Skill."

"Yeah," I agreed, "then let's start with our swords, let's master our basic attacks as soon as we can." Keiko nodded and we stood facing each other. We held both weapons in our hands, so we would be able to remember exactly how it felt to make each attack, and repeatedly used «Vertical», over and over, starting precisely in the correct position and swinging down to waist height, then raising our swords to do it again. Each time, we increased the speed of our attacks a little bit. It was important that we didn't attack wildly, because it would leave us open while we tried to recover if we threw ourselves off balance or something.

After we were satisfied with the strength of our «Vertical», we moved on to «Horizontal», and then «Slant». While none of the attacks were at the level we would like them to be, we knew it would take a while before we would reach our former level of ability with the System Assist. However, one thing was definitely in our favor here. Without System Assist, there was no more Delay. If we could master our Sword Skills, we could eventually become even stronger than would have been possible before. Of course, that was a long, long way off. But, that glimmer of what might be, gave us another tiny push to keep training, long after the sun set, and rose again.

As I'd noticed before: there really wasn't anything in Sword Art Online which could keep you from doing one thing for as long as you wanted to do it.


	70. Chapter 69

** Some New Acquaintances Chapter 69**

Five days. That was the time we allotted ourselves to completely retrain so we could fight without the System Assist. During that time, we didn't eat, didn't sleep, and rarely spoke. Over and over, we repeated the same sword strokes. Eventually, we moved on to other attacks, and then to our new weapon. After counting the sun rise for the fifth time, we plodded at a crawling pace the hundred-some meters back to the city. As soon as we walked through the invisible boundary and the familiar phrase 『Inner Area』 appeared in my vision, I let my muscles relax for the first time.

"Huh?"

"Ah, so you're awake." Awake? When wasn't I awake? I was suddenly aware that I was sitting up in a bed, the covers lying in my lap. I looked around. We were in a small room, so probably an inn. In a chair near a round table, there sat a young man. I thought I recognized him for a moment, but when his cursor appeared, his name wasn't listed. So, I didn't know him after all. He wore a gray half-cloak which covered his upper body, but flared around the chair revealing cloth pants of dark blue underneath.

"What is this? Where are we?" I asked, automatically referring to both myself and my younger sister out of habit.

"You collapsed at the entrance to town," he said.

"But I don't remember collapsing," I replied immediately.

"You looked exhausted. You probably fell unconscious so fast you didn't even realize. I was standing nearby, so I saw you walk into town and faint. You looked the most tired I've ever seen someone. How long were you out in the field, and what were you doing out there anyway?" he asked with a perplexed look.

"We were training," I said simply. I couldn't really go into details, since it wasn't the kind of training people would usually do in this world, and I definitely couldn't explain the reason for it. As expected, Keiko sat up a few moments after me, looking around as I had. She looked at me and I let the general knowledge of what I'd learned from this young man pass through our link.

"How long were you two our there?" he asked.

"Five days," we said together. He opened his mouth for a few seconds, then closed it again, as he tried to take that in. Even though SAO couldn't force the players to eat and sleep, our brains were hardwired for it, so the longer we went without food, the worse hunger would get until we ate something. The same went for sleep. Even through we were just lying in a bed, our brains felt as if we were actually running around and everything. So, of course we would get tired. It was possible to ignore it here, but our real world bodies were still awake out there. If we didn't sleep often enough, it would be bad for our already bedridden selves in the real world.

"Well, you've been sleeping since early yesterday morning, so you should be well rested enough by now," the young man said with a friendly smile. "I'm going to go hunting with my party soon, do you want to come along?" he asked.

"We'll come," Keiko answered immediately, before I had hardly realized what he was asking. I finally got it a moment later, but stayed silent because she had already answered.

Only when the young man looked at me and asked, "You too?" did I give a nod. I would go anywhere with my little sister, that much was a given. Hell, if our «Blessed Twins» passive skills still worked, I couldn't separate from her even if I tried.

When we left the inn, we were both immediately surprised that it was no longer daytime we were walking through the city when I noticed an information NPC nearby and quickly bought a newspaper. The『Weekly Argo』 listed the date directly beneath it's publisher's name. December 24, 2022.

"Almost Christmas?" I said out of surprise.

The young man with us laughed, responding, "Yeah, if you'd stayed out much longer you might have missed it," jokingly. We both nodded.

Now that I knew the date, I quickly backtracked in my mind. We'd been training the five days since we got back. That meant Kayaba had finished fixing our characters on the Eighteenth. I realized that when we met Heathcliff, he said it was the Seventeenth. Since it had taken Kayaba three days to fix our characters, that meant we'd been walking around the day before he finished. That must have been the cause of those weird messed up stats we had at the time. Going further back, it meant that we had gotten caught up in all that crazyness on the Fifteenth. Then... I thought for a minute while continuing to walk with my eyes glued to the man's back ahead of me.

"Wait, that doesn't make sense then!" Keiko said what I was thinking. I nodded. We'd gotten to this floor on the Sixth. We had gone to clear the dungeon on the Twelfth, and the next day was when everything started.

"Except, _that_ started on the Fifteenth, not the Thirteenth. How did we lose two days?" I voiced the thoughts as we both followed the same train of thought. Of course, there was only one possible answer. Without realizing it, when we were running all over the place to train our «Sprint» skill, we hadn't run for a number of hours, but a number of days.

"How could we not notice that?" Keiko whined. Since Kayaba had set our skills back to level 100, every bit of the experience gained in those days had all been erased. I sighed deeply. So that's why the skill had been around level 400 when we checked...

"Well, at least we can pinpoint exactly what we've done and when now," I said.

"Sounds interesting, what have you done?" the man with us asked, and we both froze, having just realized that we weren't alone while talking about our past.

"Well, it's a pretty long story..." I said while looking away. There was no way we could ever tell anyone about that last 'adventure' of ours. No one would believe it. Definitely not. Not even Argo would believe that one. Finding game bugs is one thing, _falling out of the world_ is something entirely different. Especially since we survived.

"Would you care to tell me?"

"Absolutely not!" we both shouted together. Not only did the young man flinch, but everyone on the street turned to stare at us. Well, everyone who wasn't staring at us already. Unfortunately, in our unsuccessful search for armor, we hadn't managed to get another set of cloaks either. So, we were walking around in regular clothing, without even our swords equipped. Right now, we must definitely be giving off the presence of 'newbies'. We were probably seen as players who had just recently taken up arms and left the «Starting City». Well, that's what I would think of us if I was in their position anyway.

That reminded me— "Hey, what are the average player levels anyway?" I asked.

The young man's surprised expression was quickly replaced while he rubbed his chin in thought. "Well, regular players will probably be 12 or 13 now. The frontlines are around 14 or 15 at most."

"Oh, cool, so we haven't fallen too far behind," I said before I could stop myself. Of course making a comment like that was like giving permission to ask my level.

"And you are...?" he said gently, trying to ask without being pushy.

However, we weren't any different than normal for once. That was the thought I felt from Keiko when she answered, "We're level 12."

"Woah, really? You guys don't look any higher than level 5..."

"W,what? Is that why we've been given trouble by everyone we talk to? Why is that anyway?"

"Complete lack of any equipment," his answer came immediately in a flat tone.

"What? We have tons of equipment!" I shouted, "we just don't have any equipped right now!"

"Oh really?" he said casually, as if testing us. I swiped my hand through the air a few times before reminding myself I had to use my left hand, then opened my menu and quickly switched to the equipment screen. Once there, I froze.

Oh right, we lost all our armor.

"Well, we don't have any armor, but we still have lots of weapons..."

"Lots of weapons and no armor, does that sound like an experienced player to you?" he asked us with stern expression. Being older than us, it felt like an adult scolding children. Some part inside from way back what seemed like a lifetime ago, actually felt bad. It was that feeling that any good kid gets when their parents scold them; like you let them down somehow. Of course, this guy wasn't my parent, nor an adult. I didn't even know him! Nevertheless, I still got a pang of that feeling deep in my stomach. I guess old habits die hard...

"Well, we've been having trouble and haven't been able to buy armor yet," I tried explaining, "we have the money for it, we just need to find someone to sell us some."

The young man grinned, "well, if you have some money, there's a guy who can help you out. We'll see him soon, he's a friend from the frontlines who's going to help us out hunting today." Since he said that, we both nodded and continued walking. If he knew a player who could sell us some armor, this would all be worth it.

While we continued to walk in silence, Keiko and I went over the biggest headlines in the paper I was still holding. The major headline: 『NPCs hinting at a Special Christmas Quest!』 I read further down and found out that apparently, there would be Christmas themed monsters appearing in the all the fields which dropped special items. Supposedly, collecting enough of these special items would do something, though that was all the information available from the NPCs. Apart from that, A large party had slain a powerful field boss, and the current Frontline was up to the Fourteenth dungeon level on Floor 3, and everyone was expecting to find the Boss Room soon.

I flipped the page over to the rumors section. While it had the disclaimer that anything listed may or may not be completely or partially true or false... Really Argo? A strange quest was appearing repeatedly, asking players to do weird tasks like standing on their heads, though it wasn't at all difficult and the rewards were minimal. Also, there had been a few disappearances, and when their friends went to check the «Monument of Life», they found that all of the victims had died of piercing damage over time. I finished reading and tapped the paper to bring up the item's usage menu, deleting it.

We crossed into the square at the center of town and I winced. I could actually _feel_ the amount of visual data increasing greatly, putting strain on my brain. A slight throb in my temple indicated if I stayed here too long, it could turn into a headache. The reason for the sudden spike was obvious. There were a lot of people crowding the square. We pushed through the crowd, careful to stick close to the man leading us, until we reached a restaurant just outside the crowded area. As soon as we saw the sign, both Keiko and I nearly collapsed when the sudden shock of hunger pangs tore through our bodies. Apparently, the lack of sleep had made us forget that we hadn't eaten either.

We walked into the bar, which was nearly as crowded as it had been outside, and he looked around for a second before heading toward the back. In the last seat, against the far wall, there sat a man I recognized immediately. He was a huge hulk of a man, a foreigner with dark skin and a shaved head. Agil. Though my memory of the time was a bit fuzzy, wasn't he the one that carried us away right after we landed back in «Urbus»?

"Yo Indigo," he said with a small wave, though his eyes then strayed to us. "Hey, it's you two!" He exclaimed, standing up. The man next to us had a surprised look as Agil pushed past to speak to us. "Hey, about last week, when you guys appeared suddenly like that."

"U,u,uh, about that..." we began stammering, though he didn't seem to notice and continued speaking

"You dropped your swords. You guys hit the ground so hard your swords went flying. It took me all night to find them. They were halfway across town in different directions, but when I went to bring them back to you, you weren't at Asuna's friend's place anymore. Here, I kept them on me, though I couldn't put them in my inventory for some reason." Reaching behind him, Agil took two swords off the back of his belt and handed them to us.

"T,thanks..." we said with small voices as the swords were placed in our hands. Although, we both had a pretty good idea of what had happened to them. I tapped the blade in it's sheath to open the weapon's attributes page, but the window that came up was just a scrambled mess. The sword was totally corrupted.

"Woah, never seen that before," the older boy commented. Hadn't Agil called him 'Indigo' a minute ago?

"Yeah, that's freaky."

"I guess it got hit too hard, it looks like the sword's messed up," I lied, "Thanks for saving it for me, but it looks like I'll have to delete it anyway." I tapped the little trash icon in the bottom corner and the sword shattered into light particles in my hand.

"Looks like this one is still ok," Keiko noted. Agil smiled when he heard that, but I raised an eyebrow. Why was that sword ok if the other one wasn't? Before I could come up with any ideas, Agil grabbed us and ushered everyone back toward the table, away from all the eyes turned our way. Thinking about it now, they were probably looking to see where the shattering sound came from, since the item breaking sound was very similar to a player death sound...

When the NPC waiter came, Agil ordered a turkey leg, apparently this place's special, Indigo got some kind of egg dish, and we asked for soup, since we were tight on cash right now. The waiter left and the two men got to talking about the upcoming Christmas Event. Apparently, they would be teaming up with a number of other players to go out hunting the special mobs, which were due to appear at midnight, as soon as Christmas began. Indigo said he'd picked us up and offered to bring us too, and that Agil probably had some armor we could use. That brought a big smile to the dark skinned man's face.

At that moment, the waiter returned with our food. He set the plates in front of each of us, then a large jug of ale before each of the men, and two glasses of water in front of Keiko and myself. That's weird, we didn't order drinks, I thought to myself.

"So, you're looking for armor. In my business, the saying goes 'Buy cheap, sell cheap.'" Agil grinned widely, adding a wink, which for some reason made me feel as if the 'sell cheap' part wouldn't actually be too cheap...


	71. Cheatsheet 2

Cheatsheet as of chapter 69

—

«»

『』

#######

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

########

exp 264000

col 46000

########

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 5

STR 11

AGI 20

HP 2210

########

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 5

STR 11

AGI 20

HP 2210

########

One-handed Sword 106

Sp: 115400

- 100

Sp: 101000

- 100

Sp: 101000

Dagger 110

Sp: 122600

- 100

Sp: 101000

- 100

Sp: 101000

########

# E Note

Cloth shirt 2 2 Green

cloth pants 1 0 Black

cloth skirt 2 2 Blue

Boots 2 2 Brown

Wolf-Tooth sword 15 2 E: +7 (4S3D)

Wolf-Tooth sword 1 0 'S'

Anneal Blade 2 0

Iron Dagger 2 2

blessed twins shard of power I 16

30% full

########

Level chart

1 4000 0-4000

2 8000 4000-12000

3 12000 12000-24000

4 16000 24000-40000

5 20000 40000-60000

6 24000 60000-84000

7 28000 84000-112000

8 32000 112000-144000

9 36000 144000-180000

10 40000 180000-220000

11 44000 220000-264000

12= 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20 80000 760000-840000

########

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

########

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

########

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape.(Only 1 side of X, since I can't use less than/more than symbols)

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Underdcut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut


	72. Chapter 70

**Christmas**** Chapter 70**

"So, it's leather you're looking for, right?" After eating, we had all gone over to Agil's place, where all his goods were packed up for the night. "Here, I've got two good breastplates and some forearm protectors. Fine quality here, you'll love them. Just thirty thousand Col." Just? I brought up the info windows on the armor and they certainly were better than what we'd had before, though I definitely wouldn't price it at half what he was asking.

"Keiko?" I figured we could buy it, since we would make more Col once we were combat-ready again.

She nodded, "Yeah, we'll take it. Thanks."

She bought the armor while I asked Indigo, who was leaning against the door, "So, we're going out to hunt special Christmas mobs? Do you know anything about them?" He shook his head and said that none of the NPCs had given any information about exactly what kind of mobs would appear. "Is that so..." I was a little nervous; we'd been training for five days straight, so our ability should almost be on the level of a basic Sword Skill, but it was still unnerving to go into a fight I didn't know if I was prepared for. Of course, these were about the best conditions to do so, since we would have stronger party members to back us up.

After hanging out and joking around for a little while, it was time to go meet the rest of the group. We all left for the town square again, arriving just a little before midnight.

In the time we'd been gone, it seemed that lights and decorations had been put up all over town. It really looked like Christmas time. There were even colored lights hanging between all the buildings and a huge Christmas Tree placed in the center of the plaza. Indigo pointed over at some players amongst the crowd and we slowly pushed our way through until we met them.

"Griselda-san?" Keiko and I gasped. Behind the woman in the half-cloak, stood the group we had helped in clearing the dungeon some time ago.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" she asked with a confused tone. Duh, last time we were completely cloaked and all she'd seen were our faces. Now we were regular clothes, so of course she wouldn't recognize us.

"Oh, we're the two that helped you clear the Second Floor's dungeon. Rei and Rai," I explained quickly.

"Really? Well, you two have changed... a lot."

"Is that so..." Keiko said, chuckling as if trying to deny it. Right then, the bell tower began to ring. Everyone stopped what they were doing as each toll rang past. On the twelfth and final toll, a window appeared before me, and probably everyone else, though I couldn't see them. I read through it, apparently a new quest.

『Christmas Time!』

『Naughty Elves have appeared throughout the fields on all floors and are dropping』

『Christmas present boxes. For every ten presents you collect, you get a prize!』

『Keep an eye out for the Elves' Boss through!』

『Time Remaining 11:59:46』

With the last line of the quest counting down, I could see the quest was timed to last until Noon. An item collecting quest, sounds good to me, I thought while grinning.

"Ok everyone, let's get out there and some Naughty Elves!" someone in the crowd shouted loud enough for everyone to hear.

"OH!" the cry rang through the square as everyone began running toward the city gates, in every direction. While our group got caught up in the surge of motion, we all pressed toward the city's South gate. I wasn't at all familiar with the third floor, since all my time here was spent singlemindedly training, so I didn't know what kind of area it would be. A strong push through our bond made me look over at Keiko. Since we couldn't hear each other over the roaring crowd, she pushed a thought to me. After taking a few seconds to figure out what she was telling me, I got it. 'Time to equip «Sprint». I sent back a feeling of agreement while opening my menu and equipping the skill without a hint of hesitation.

I nodded to her and we kept moving, until the crowd reached the city gate. The crushed up crowd exploded through the opening, many players crashing to the ground as everyone flooded out. Once the body of players had dispersed some, we found our own party again and all moved away from the city.

"Well, that was interesting," Griselda laughed.

"More like suffocating..." Grimlock shuddered.

"Haha, let's go! Time to get some special prizes!" Agil shouted, raising his ax high into the air. When I saw him do that, it suddenly reminded me.

"Crap, Keiko, we have to equip our stuff!" I whispered to her. We were about to go hunting, but were standing in nothing but shirts and skirts. Now that I thought about it, it was _really_ cold outside. I started shivering, wishing I had my old cloak back. Just then, a trade window opened in my view, a half-cloak appearing a moment later. I looked up to see Griselda smiling.

"Don't worry, I have some spares."


	73. Chapter 71

**Christmas Surprise**** Chapter 71**

As we walked through the dense forest, small snowflakes began to drift down through the trees. Keiko and I looked up to watch them, since it was our first time seeing snow fall in Aincrad. "What is it?" the question came from Griselda on my left, who stood opposite of Keiko.

"The snow," we both responded, continuing to walk while our eyes stared upward. Tiny crystalline dots flecked the air, and I saw that when they struck a surface, like a tree branch, it began to take on a lighter color. After enough flakes hit things, they would probably become covered in snow.

"What snow?" Griselda asked. I glanced over at her, confused, as she stared intently upward. "...you mean..." She continued staring for a minute longer while the snowfall increased, coming down more heavily than before. "I... I think I see it now."

"Yeah, I can sort of see it too now that you mention it," Agil commented from the back of the group.

"You two have really good eyes," the heavily armored Caynz said from the line of three in the middle. He was walking on the right, with Schmitt to his left, and Grimlock on his.

"Hehehe, is that so..." Keiko said, scratching her head nervously. As we moved down the path, huge trees on either side quickly becoming covered in snow, I started to be able to make out something ahead. I focused on the tiny lines in my vision and soon they resolved into the edges of trees ahead, with an open field beyond. We slowly proceeded, eventually reaching the field. Of the huge crowd before, no one else had come this way with us. Wherever we found these elves, we wouldn't have to fight over POPs.

Passing the last tall tree, the rocky path beneath our feet yielded to soft grass, white with new snowfall. I looked around, but the field was definitely empty. Just where in the field were all these elves supposed to appear?

"Guh!" My eyes widened as pain shot up my side. Similar sounds erupted all around, telling me that I wasn't the only one hit. In the corner of my vision, my hp was decreasing slowly. I turned to find my attacker. Small. That was the first word that ran through my mind. It was a little person with a cartoonish face twisted into a huge grin. Large eyes and inhumanly puffy cheeks bulged while shockingly green hair stuck out wildly from under it's lopsided pointy hat.

I grit my teeth while looking at the creature. Without the pain dampener, it really felt like I had been stabbed by the comically large butcher's knife in it's hand. Fortunately, it wasn't much worse than when Kayaba had messed with it the first time, so the shock wasn't too bad. I pressed my right foot down hard and jumped away, drawing my sword in the same motion. I landed, already facing back toward the monster which had stabbed me, Keiko doing the same a little ways to my left.

So, the special Christmas monsters were an ambush type? Figures. After the red curser appeared above the little elf, about as tall as a normal goblin, and revealed that it was in fact the 『Naughty Elf』in the quest, I turned my attention to the rest of our party. "Huh?" My eyes widened in shock to see the yellow symbol marking all of their hp bars. Paralysis. They were all standing stock-still, knives still embedded in their sides with terror written on their faces. With another glance, I could see the same yellow icon in my own health bar. Keiko too. So, why could we still move? A grin spread across my face.

I guess the way paralysis keeps you from moving uses the same system Sword Skills do to take control of your movements. Too bad it's that system is broken on our characters, I snickered sarcastically in my mind. One elf for each of us, meaning seven total. With the two of us, and still unsure of our combat proficiency, this would probably be hard. Also considering that these monsters were on Floor 3 and probably higher level than us.

At that time, it struck me how dangerous this situation really was. It wouldn't be our normal slaughter fest without a care. We really might die here. Just like way back on that first day, this was serious trouble. We might not win this fight, and we couldn't flee either. If we did, they would definitely kill our party members. I couldn't bear that on my conscience, and I'm sure Keiko couldn't either.

Since I didn't have pouches to hold potions anymore, I dug one from the only place left to hold them outside my inventory; the pocket of my skirt. I downed it immediately and tossed it aside before it even vanished.

"Let's go!" I shouted, charging forward.

"Oh!" Keiko's reply came in the same breath. The the two goblins no longer with targets on the end of their knives moved toward us slowly. I brought my sword up to a higher position, pointing it outward to activate «Rage Spike». It was a charge type skill, and thankfully, despite the lack of System Assist, when it was activated the movement speed cap based on my AGI was lifted, allowing me to run forward even faster than a full sprint. With truly impossible speed, I closed on the rightmost of the two cartoonish elves and swung upward with all my might before it could respond.

My blade tore through the monster straight upward and it reeled backward, it's hp decreasing as it staggered. Without any Delay to freeze me after an attack, I maintained my momentum, stepping forward as I swung the sword around slightly, bringing it down in the position for a «Slant». The elf brought its dagger up to block, and despite the heavier weight of my sword, it must have had incredible strength, because my weapon nearly stopped dead. I pressed down, but it disengaged with a flourish, knocking me back.

As I stumbled, another elf broke away from its former target and charged at me. Panic inched at the edge of my mind, but I pushed it away as I reminded myself fiercely that I had another weapon. Drawing my dagger in time to deflect its thrusting attack, I regained my footing, standing my ground with both weapons raised before me. The first elf each of us had attacked were down near 70% health, but we had definitely drawn the attention of the others, because now they were all pressing forward together.

"We can't take this many at once!" Keiko shouted to me, slowly retreating, her weapons held up defensively as three of the elves advanced on her. The other four were headed my way, and I couldn't hold my ground. As I continued backing toward the edge of the clearing, I swung my sword as best I could, but I was definitely at a level disadvantage here. I couldn't parry to create an opening, because there were two or three elves facing me at any given time, so all I could do was defend while retreating slowly.

All at once, I felt that I'd moved more than 25 meters from Keiko. Like a shock ran through my body, I felt the passive effect wear off. I glanced her way, near another edge of the clearing, then back at the monsters before me.

Without warning, I halted my retreat, suddenly charging forward, right into the middle of the four monsters. With my left foot extended far out, I already had my sword drawn far back. Once my right foot was planted firmly, I kicked my left against the ground as hard as I could, swinging around to activate the powerful «Whirl» Sword Skill, a spinning attack. While normally this would be suicidal, as the long delay after would be more than enough time for the four monsters to completely murder me, the lack of a Delay allowed my to raise my dagger over my shoulder while spinning.

As soon as the attack ended, I struck forward, though not aiming for any enemy. My blade was aimed toward Keiko, who as always, had made the same move as me. When my dagger sliced through the air, the newest dagger skill we had unlocked at level 110, at the very end of our five days of training, activated. «Reaver» was apparently a curved sword skill as well, the same as «Linear» was for rapiers, though it had a higher proficiency requirement for daggers. The when the charge type skill activate, jumped forward as fast as the system would allow, covering ten meters in a fraction of a second.

Keiko and I landed right in front of each other, though we immediately spun back around toward the enemies running toward us. We were forced to back off again, putting even more distance between us and our paralyzed party. We fought as best we could, but just couldn't hold our ground against so many high level mobs. We were forced into the thick forest outside the clearing. Struggling just to keep the 『Naughty Elves』 from landing any attacks.

"What do we do?" Keiko asked while breathing heavily. Fighting like we were, it was a whole lot harder. All of the 'game' things had been stripped away. System Assist, Pain Dampening, as well as other systems which didn't affect actual combat, like the focus system, whatever it was called. It didn't change the fight at all, but we saw our enemies in perfect clarity, not as a simple, unfocused blur. Everything was so _real_ now. This world didn't feel like a game anymore, not by a long shot.

"Let's try to circle around, back toward everyone else," I responded quickly. I turned right and dashed around the mobs formed up in front. With Keiko on my heels, we made our way back toward the clearing, where I saw that more elves had jumped out to replace the ones we'd drawn off. None of the helpless people had fallen below half health yet, but if they kept getting stabbed, the paralysis would never wear off and they wouldn't stand a chance.

Out of nowhere, another group of five elves seemed to appear from the trees ahead of us, but I drew my sword upward, to point out from my right. It began to glow as the system recognized the position for «Sonic Leap» and we jumped right over the short monsters. However, another group appeared only slightly past where we would land, so we had to dig our feet in and skid to a halt as soon as we hit the ground.

With a group of four ahead, five behind, and seven closing from the left, we were forced to shoot off to the right. All three groups formed together as we retreated, coming to a total of sixteen monsters. There were so many knives poking toward us, we had to stay out of range, unable to even attempt a counter, or we would surely be impaled.

Backing up faster now, we were probably moving in a way that would take us alongside the clearing. I hopped back to dodge the next incoming dagger slash, but my feet didn't land on the cold ground afterward.

The first thought to scream through my mind was OH GOD NOT AGAIN. However, when I turned in midair to look below, I didn't see a giant chasm, endless darkness, the end of the world, or anything like that. It was just a cliff.

Just a cliff?

Note: Ninja edited the cheetsheat to include «Reaver» because they had it at that point.


	74. Chapter 72

**Going Down**** Chapter 72**

Luckily for us, the cliff we'd accidentally fallen over wasn't a sheer drop. My eyes scanned down the surface, which looked to be a steep, rocky bank. I quickly sheethed my weapons, reached out, though I couldn't see where, and clasped hands with Keiko. We twisted in midair, managing to get straightened out before we hit the side of the cliff. We pulled ourselves close together just in time.

"Guh!" my breath was knocked out when my back struck hard rock and I turned over, beginning to roll down the steep incline. Still clutching tight to each other, we both rolled one over the other, as the world spun all around. I saw my hp decreasing bit by bit, with every harsh impact against the sharp rocks. If this was the real world, we would be coming out of this with a lot of broken bones. Here, we just had to hope we didn't lose all our hp.

Even during our own tumble down, I could hear the screams of the elves as they all plummeted down right after us. Let's just hope they died before they hit the bottom. With each time we completed a tumble or spin, I could see the base of the cliff approaching, until finally, we arrived, only to find the ground not actually there. Another few meters down, I landed flat on my back, Keiko on top of me. For a few seconds, stars spun in my vision from cracking the back of my head against the ground.

You can't get a concussion in this world, can you? I wondered dazedly for a few moments, until I managed to shake it off and forcibly drag myself to my feet beside Keiko. She'd gotten off much better in the fall. That much was obvious just by looking at her hp, which was nearly half full, while mine wasn't far from red. We quickly downed a potion, just as the elves began landing all around us.

We both drew weapons, but luckily, the elves all had very low health from the fall. We cleaned them all up before they could recover from the stun after falling. We both sank down with our backs to the cliff which had inadvertently saved our lives, slowly bringing our breathing under control again. Despite my unmarked body, I felt all beaten and bruised from the fall. Hopefully it would go away soon, as there were no actual bruises.

"Well, that worked out pretty well, we got all the elves," I said with a smile.

"Wait! What about the others? There were more elves!" Keiko gasped. We both shot to our feet, but the last lip of the cliff, which was a straight drop we had no way to scale, was nearly ten meters(32ft) high. We weren't going to get out of here the same way we came in.

"Wait, now that I think about it..." I mumbled, turning around. The area we had fallen into was ringed an all four sides by impassable cliffs. Above these cliffs were inclines identical to the one we had fallen down. So, "how are we supposed to get back out again?" I spoke my final thought aloud.

Keiko had realized the same problem. "There has to be a way out, since this kind of thing obviously isn't meant to kill." We both looked all around. Now that we were actually looking, we quickly found the wide doorway set into the side of the cliff face across from the one we'd fallen down.

"That door... has Christmas lights and garland on it..." we both said together. Either all the entrances to special areas had been decorated for Christmas, or this place had something to do with the special event today.

"We'll just have to hope those guys can survive without us, because this is probably going to take some time," I said slowly. We walked toward the doorway while I reached into my pockets. When we had nearly reached the door, I said, "hey, I only have a few potions left, you?"

"Yeah, I don't have many either." My hp was near half and hers was almost full again, but the last potions we taken had worn off, so I drank another. That just left me with two more. Since we didn't have any spares in our inventory, because none of the NPCs would sell them to us, we were seriously low on potions now.

"We're about to go into a seriously dangerous area, what are we going to do without healing items?" I asked. Even if we only sustained minor damage once in a while, without any way to heal it, we likely would not survive this. I gulped.

"What about «Battle Healing»?

"What that?" I asked. I couldn't recall hearing of that before. Where had she heard it?

"I think it's a skill, someone mentioned it at some point, I think." She scrunched her eyebrows together in concentration, but I could tell she couldn't remember the source. I pulled over my menu with my left hand and opened the character tap, tapping the skills menu. Touching my only remaining empty slot, I searched through the new window which appeared until I found a skill called «Battle Healing». "It's here," I noted as I brought up the skill's information window.

"'«Battle Healing» increases the player's natural healing over time by one point per ten seconds, per skill level.' That actually sounds pretty useful," I commented. Right now, natural healing really didn't do anything. If I stared at my health bar for about a thirty seconds or so, I might see my hp rise by one point. Meaning, my natural healing at level 12 was like 0.3 points or some such. Seeing as my maximum hp was 2210 points, healing from almost dead naturally would take... I don't even know. But it would be a really long time, days even. With this skill, we would heal by 100 points every ten seconds, meaning 600 points per minute. So, between three and four minutes to heal fully.

If we took this skill, we would be able to take a short break after a fight to heal any damage we had taken, meaning this wouldn't be a battle of attrition. I didn't even have to ask, because we were already both in agreement. I tapped the 『Equip』 button at the bottom of the info window and my three slots were full.

As I continued looking at the remainder of the skill's information, I was glad we got to equip it at level 100 already. Because: the rest read, 『Skill points increase by 1 point per point of damage taken.』 So, to level up the skill, we would need to get hit. Not exactly the smart thing to do if we wanted to survive. Sure enough, this would be the hardest skill to level up later. I shook my head, think about that _after_ we get through this alive.

In the corner of my vision, my hp was nearly full again, due to the new skill and the potion which had nearly finished its healing effect.

Standing in front of the wooden door, its perimeter decorated with lights and sparkling strings of garland, I looked at the actual door itself. It was carved with fanciful Christmas scenes, like Santa and the reindeer flying with his sleigh. So, it was definitely a Christmas themed area. I reached out, turning the knob. I pulled and the door swung out on my right. We slowly proceeded through. The inside was dark, with small candles providing the only light as shallow stairs descended downward.

Long shadows flickered across the cracked stone walls, fluttering eerily before quickly vanishing again. I had a creepy feeling, like the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. After we had taken a few paces into the corridor, the entrance slammed shut behind us. We both jumped, slowly turning back to look at the entrance closed off behind us, trapping us.

"Wait a second," Keiko said suddenly, "why did the door have to close? We already couldn't get out that way."

"Oh yeah that's right..." Shrugging it off, we proceeded to walk down the stairs at a quick pace, eager to get through here and back to our party.


	75. Chapter 73

**Christmas Carols of Doom**** Chapter 73**

Author Note: My cold turned into laryngitis; I'm completely incapable of speech right now. O_o

As we descended, the darkness grew thicker around us, the small candles on the walls spaced farther apart at every interval. Between the staircase and close stone walls, something occurred to me. "Hey, Keiko, do you think this is a dungeon?" I asked.

"No way, I didn't see the tower anywhere around here," she replied immediately.

"No no, not the floor dungeon, a different one, like an extra dungeon," I explained.

"There are extra dungeons? I've never heard of one before."

"Neither have I, but I was just thinking, didn't a lot of people talk about how Aincrad has one dungeon on every floor? Some of them also mentioned how it was a lot different than other games. They said that most games like this don't have separate levels, like Aincrad's floors, because it doesn't work right. Something about not being open enough. And that once we hit the top, there's nothing else to explore."

"Well, now we all know the reason for that," Keiko pointed out.

"True, but if other games just had dungeons randomly scattered around, maybe there are some extras in SAO too. The problem with that is, don't all dungeons have a Boss? If this is a special Christmas dungeon, we'll find the Elves' Boss, at the end. How are we supposed to fight something like that on our own?"

"Hmm, I see your point. The first boss seemed pretty weak at the time, but it took them what, forty some players to beat it? Now we're on the third floor, so this thing would be a whole lot stronger." We continued down the stairs for a minute in silence, before Keiko suddenly burst out, "Oh! Why don't we just message Argo-san and Asuna-san to request backup?" She already had her friend list open by the end of her thought, but stared at it blankly. "All our friends are gone..."

"What do you mean?" I asked, looking at the window from the opposite side. Even backward, I could easily see the problem. Our friends list was empty, probably reset by Kayaba as well.

I sighed, then said, "Well, it doesn't matter, we can't send messages from inside dungeons anyway. We will have to find them to add them as friends again though..." I thought aloud, just before noticing the end of the stairway.

"Ah, looks like we're here," Keiko commented.

"Just hope there aren't any traps in this one..." I shuddered at the thought of this whole place going nuclear the moment we stepped off the stairs. Slowly reaching my foot down, I pressed the toe of my boot to the floor, waiting for the light or sound effect signaling an armed trap. A few seconds passed, then I stepped down with one foot, then the other. "Yes!" I shouted. No traps here.

We proceeded down the small corridor, much more narrow than a floor dungeon's space. At maybe three meters(10ft) across, it was enough for no more than two players to fight side by side comfortably. Well, normal players anyway. It was dark in this area, though I could see light coming from around the turn ahead. Running my hand along the wall yielded the feel of smooth cut stone, with only a few variations in the surface.

We drew our swords quietly as we came near the first corner, a blind righthand turn of more than ninety degrees. I let Keiko move in first, waiting patiently behind as she pressed her back against the wall and quickly leaned out to get a look. She waved her hand forward while sending a feeling of 'clear' through the bond. I let out a breath as we turned the corner. In this new hallway, there were more Christmas lights strung up in the corners near the roof. They were a deep color, about halfway between red and purple. Providing the only light, they skewed the all the scenery in their powerful glow.

As we slowly walked farther, a faint sound emerged in the silence. We both focused closely on it while we moved closer, until we could eventually make out the sound of laughter. It sounded almost like a lot of little kids laughing, though it was a little different somehow. I couldn't quite tell why, but surely I'd find out once we discovered the source of the sound.

We kept on, our eyes growing accustomed to the strange lighting and the sound drawing closer. The corridor slowly arched to the left without any hard turns for a few minutes, until we arrived at another doorway. This one was large, with a massive set of double doors the entire span of the corridor, and even taller than they were wide. Through the thick wood, we could hear the strange childlike sound. Whatever it was, it was right on the other side of the door.

"Ready?" I asked. We both took a deep breath, hands tightening on our swords. With our breathing in sync, we both responded to my question. "Ready." I took the left door, Keiko took the right, and we pushed, throwing them wide in one go. All at once, heat and sound washed over my other senses. The fiery sensation along my skin had no immediately apparent source, but the sound did. Oh man, did it.

Forward, to the right side, there was a large window, like the big safety glass windows in a lab on a tv show. On the other side, there were elves. Lots and lots of elves. And they were all rushing around, carrying out whatever tasks they had, while singing, all in time,

"Slash 'em cut 'em drill 'em.

Bash 'em gut 'em kill 'em.

The more and more they fight,

the bloodier and bloodier

will be this Christmas night!

.

Break out the toy boxes,

let's give 'em a show!

We'll play 'em like foxes,

catch 'em like so!

Hold 'em and chain 'em,

then stick 'em and drain 'em.

.

Nick likes his snacks raw,

better even still wriggling,

grins at their struggling,

right until he takes out his saw!

.

They all want our presents,

but none want to give!

For that we resent 'em,

and stick 'em with a shiv!

.

It's how me make our Christmas merry!

Too bad for the humans though,

bleeding and bleeding on the new snow.

Dying and dyeing as red as new cherry!"

In the time it took the elves to sing their demented song, we had proceeded, practically sliding ourselves against the far wall to avoid detection, and came to a set of metal stairs which seemed like an industrial catwalk. Taking slow, silent steps, we arrived at the top shortly before the song ended, only to immediately begin anew.

We went on in utter silence as their song echoed up from below. The metal catwalk split in two directions, straight ahead and off to the right. Since the latter would take us above the elves, we chose to go straight without a second thought. No way were we going to go any closer to that pit of maniacal demons. I glanced over as we moved away from the fork, but my crazy sharp vision made me catch a detail I will forever wish I hadn't.

Down with the elves, I saw a human being, clearly someone trapped in this death game, strapped to a table. As my eyes locked onto the sight, the green cursor above his head appeared as well as the hp bar, which was no more than a sliver of red, still decreasing due to the knife embedded into the terrified boy's chest. He couldn't have been more than twelve years old. At that moment, his eyes bugged out, and his body shattered into glowing lights, only to quickly dissolve into the hot air.

The breath caught in my throat as I staggered, paralyzing fear rushing through me. My breath came back in shallow pants. That boy had just died in that pit of madness. Since we were in a hidden place, the elves had definitely brought him here. They had stabbed him with their paralyzing daggers, dragged him to an underground pit, and stood around singing and singing in their off-pitch, childlike voices about the terror and pain they were currently putting him through, while all of his hp drained away to nothing.

As my eyes continued to stare down into that red pit, I made out the other faces among the elves. Boys, men young and old, even young girl, all strapped down, stabbed full of daggers, their screams of agony, rage and dispair reduced to hissing coughs in their throats.

I gulped, my fist tightening around my sword. I could feel incredible rage welling up from deep inside, urging me to rush down into that swarm of demented monsters and slaughter them where they stand. I might have, if not for Keiko's hand on my shoulder, keeping me with her.

"We can't fight that many. If we try, we'll just die too," she said sadly. I grit my teeth together hard, raising my sword uselessly. With a great effort, I turned myself away, trembling as a tear slipped down my face.

"Someday..." I cut short to stifle a sob, then pressed on through my quiet declaration, "someday we will definitely be strong enough to help those in need. And when that time comes, we will not flee. We'll fight."

After a few seconds, Keiko's only response was a muttered, "Yes." As we put distance between us and the pit of elves, we sped up our pace, moving at a quick jog.

"Maybe if we kill the Boss, those elves will run off or something and we can at least save some of them..." I said with a flat voice. I didn't believe myself.

"Yes..." this time, Keiko's tone was exactly like mine.

Author's Note: That came out... a lot darker than I originally had in mind...


	76. Chapter 74

**Evil Underground Lair**** Chapter 74**

Farther into the demented Christmas themed dungeon, we made another sharp left turn and crossed paths with a couple 『Naughty Elves』. They were isolated, so we took them out with little trouble. We still couldn't manage to avoid all their attacks, but our new «Battle Healing» skill healed the small amount of damage we each took. Once past those, it was all clear, down the long, straight corridor.

Finally, we came to another set of double doors. Unlike the doors before, this one was made of checkered red and green glass. It was slightly translucent, just enough to kind of make out that there was another room on the far side. This one didn't have any door handle, so we just reached out slowly, then pushed, the doors swinging open wide as we burst through.

In this new room, no movement alerted me to any immediate enemies. Looking around more carefully, this area was tall, with differently colored lights in the high ceiling. Each light throughout the room seemed to be a different bright, neon color, causing everything to be cast with in the most otherworldly light that it was actually kind of hard to look at. I couldn't tell the true color of the floor or walls due to the lighting.

Though, the most defining thing about this room had to be the giant Christmas present boxes. About as tall as my chest, with approximately cubical proportions. They were clearly wrapped gift boxes, the thin wrapping paper all around and a huge satin bow on top of each. And they were everywhere. I could make out a few paths going between them, but they covered most of the floor space, while being stacked high along the side walls further into the room, which itself looked about one hundred fifty meters to the far side. On the far wall, I could see another set of glass doors like the ones we had just come through.

"So, a trapped area," Keiko noted. I nodded. A big room like this without any mobs would surely have traps everywhere.

"Ready, set, go." I said quietly. We burst forward, picking a path in the middle of the room and dashing down it as fast as we could. As expected the giftboxes on either side opened up and all sorts of dangerous things shot out, from jack-in-the-boxes armed with giant scissors to big monkeys which attempted to grab onto us. After we ducked under their outstretched paws, and moved away for a second or two, they erupted into a massive explosion. Running like we were was actually starting to disorient me, because every second we passed through many areas cast in a completely different colors.

When we saw a line of boxes ahead, which we were probably supposed to go around, we drew our daggers. Right before we reached the boxes, we both swung our weapons up near head height, as if holding them over our shoulders. Our weapons took on a red glow and we jumped up, pressing our feet against the lid of the boxes before the opened. Thrusting our weapons outward in a way that the system would recognize the Sword Skill, we performed «Reaver», a charge type which would lift the maximum movement speed limit.

At the same time, the boxes beneath us sprung open, except we were standing on top, so the massive force of the lid springing open launched us toward the far end of the room at incredible speed. We held out our weapons as they trailed red behind, going a number of meters before the Sword Skill ended and our speed slowed back within normal limits. We came down, hitting the floor and rolling back to our feet.

Another short dash took us out of the field of gift boxes and through the far door without looking back. As we slowed back to a walk in the next hallway, we quickly caught our breath and continued on. It took longer for my eyes to get un-bugged out from all those colors though. The path steadily curved to the right again, and in a few minutes, more voices could be heard. We continued on, eventually coming to an opening. There was no door this time, just an opening to the next room. Much like the first pit we'd seen, but thankfully this one held no humans.

To our left, countless elves were working, doing all sorts of things. Though I couldn't make sense of any of the individual tasks, it appeared that they were making more of those trapped giftboxes. They were singing the same demented song as the other elves, and we quickly moved on, taking the staircase which led downward, and through a smaller, darker wooden door. When it closed behind us, all sound from the workshop above vanished.

Now in silence, we walked on. This corridor was most similar to the first one when we arrived. Instead of being lit by many different Christmas lights, there were only candles, casting the whole area in a faint, flickering light. It felt hotter too, which was a surprise. Even with the half-cloaks Griselda gave us, it had still been a bit cold outside. In here it had seemed an ok temperature before, but this lower area was almost sweltering. I shook off the feeling and we both picked up our pace, anxious to be out of this terrible place.

Another door stood in our path. However, the appearance immediately made us pause. Though it was Christmas themed it wasn't made of wood or glass, it was... Different. As I stared at it, I could feel as if I was seeing it in two different ways. It was almost like looking at it over a pair of glasses, where I could see the door with my own eyes, and also see it through the glasses.

"So..." we both said at the same time as we stared. I couldn't tell what was creating the strange feeling as I stared at the door, but we really couldn't go back anymore. "Let's do it," again we had both come to the same conclusion. We reached out, touching the surface lightly at first. The moment my skin touched it, I realized what I couldn't understand before.

A blue light wrapped around both of us, then my vision went completely black. The door was made of crystal, it was a giant teleport crystal. The question was where it would take us. After a couple seconds to transfer, we appeared in the new area. Looking around, my eyebrows drew high up automatically. There were other people here.

Except, they all wore extraordinarily heavy armor, and huge shields. Just about all of them were massive people themselves. No one had ever been sure why, but it seemed like smaller people were better suited for AGI builds and larger people were good for tank builds. Though there was no difference in their stats, it was probably harder to dodge due to their larger size. Consequently, it was also easier to use their body as a shield for someone else. Though, no one had ever come up with a real reason, it just turned out that way.

When we arrived, all of these big men looked at us like they didn't believe it. "How the hell did you two make it here?" one man asked. We stared back at them, about forty in total, every single one with the heaviest tank builds we'd ever seen.

"Oi," came from another man to get our attention.

"A,ah! Yes, that is, umm, we were teleported here," Keiko explained.

"Yes, we saw you get teleported here," the first large man said again with a look like 'are you stupid?' "We wanted to know how you got past all the elves to get to the teleporter. With your builds, you'd be dead in one hit."

"What?" we both gasped.

"The elves cause paralysis on hit. We're the only people who managed to get away from them, because we have enough resistance to either avoid the effect or have it wear off in just a moment. Everyone else got hauled off to die," he explained with an angry expression, "they couldn't even put up a fight." If that was true, then what about our party? Had they all died? I had to shake the thought out of my head when another man started talking.

"What we want to know is how two pure AGI players managed to avoid getting paralyzed like everyone else."

"Low level players at that," someone else in the crowd noted.

"Well..." I said slowly. Inside, I was asking Keiko if we should tell the truth or just say we didn't know. I could feel her indecisiveness for a few moments, until she had an idea.

"Actually, I think it was a bug. We got paralyzed and all, but it didn't keep us from moving. We ran away, but fell down this big hole and wound up here."

"By the way, where is 'here' exactly?" Looking around, it looked like we were in some kind of dome. The rock wall/roof, which curved over all of us had little lights embedded in the surface which provided almost enough light. Where the wall met the floor, there was no break, or any sort of sign indicating they weren't just one big piece of stone curved around us. Despite being teleported here, there was no teleport stone or anything like that which we could use to get out.

"How should we know? It looks like we've been trapped somewhere for now. I figure we'll get sent back to town when the Christmas quest ends," the same first man as before said. He had slightly more tan skin than normal and a warhammer on his back.

"Is that so..." I said in a low voice. A short distance away, a blue light appeared, another large man coming from it. He looked around for a few moments, apparently having just teleported here too.

"So we just wait I guess..." Keiko said softly, sitting with her back against the wall. I sat beside her with a sigh.

"Guess so."


	77. Chapter 75

**Incoming**** Chapter 75**

"Wait wait wait, you didn't explain," a new man suddenly piped up after everyone else had forgotten about us momentarily. All being big tanky guys, the only way I could discern this one from the rest was by his deep blue armor. "You said it was a bug, but I've never heard of anyone miraculously moving while paralyzed before." Low voices chimed in with 'yeahs' and 'that's rights' throughout the large circular room. "You two don't even look strong, so why should we believe you could get here anyway? Just as the agreements started growing louder, another voice cut in.

"Wait, shut up everyone. Who cares about them?" waving a hand as if to knock us from his thoughts, "I just got a message from my friend. He's saying that the NPCs in town all started talking about a special event, all at once. Apparently it's going to be held in the middle of «Urbus» on the second floor. And soon, really soon." I raised an eyebrow at that. When I opened the quest section of my menu, I saw the time remaining until the end of the Christmas event wasn't for another ten and a half hours. If these guys were right and we'd all be sent back to town at the end, then we would miss this upcoming special event.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked Keiko quietly. She nodded. We were all trapped in an unknown location after a forced teleport from inside a Christmas themed dungeon. My guess was that we were being held until the event began, because we would be part of it. Now, just what would this event be?

"Boss Battle," Keiko mouthed the words while sending the meaning through the bond. Realizing how she had reached that conclusion, my eyes widened for a moment, then I nodded. At the end of a dungeon was a boss. We had gone into a dungeon, but hadn't fought the boss yet. Since this was a special occasion, no one had prepared for a boss battle. As such, there was no forty-nine person raid group going into any one of those dungeons to be sent to the boss battle. That must be why we were all being held here. The system was waiting until enough people arrived to form a full sized raid group.

However, the only class here were tanks, since no one else could get through the paralysis those daggers caused. We didn't have any back row damage dealers or fast attackers. Basically, this group had a lot of defense, but not enough attack power. Why would the requirements to be part of the raid group exclude all the damage dealers? I shook my head, to clear those thoughts. There was something more important right now. By the confused babbling throughout the room, no one else had realized what we had. If we were going to win the coming fight, we had to be prepared.

But, how could we prepare for an enemy we had never seen? Still, just knowing we were in for a boss fight would keep everyone from panicking when it began.

With that thought in mind, we both stood up and took a deep breath. Then shouted loudly to make sure we got everyone's attention. "Everyone! Listen up!" It definitely worked, because in the next moment, all eyes were on us. We couldn't stop now, so we went on, a little quieter now that the air had grown still. "The special event that's going to happen is a Boss fight. And we're going to be the ones fighting it." In the moment of silence that followed, everyone started shouting at once, to the point that I couldn't even tell what they were all saying.

"Hold it, hold it!" We both screamed at the top of our lungs to quiet them down enough to get the next part out. "One at a time or we can't hear any of you!"

"Pretty sure what we're all asking is: how the hell do you know that?" One guys raised his hand high and shouted angrily from all the way on the other side of the large room.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," we responded immediately. "It takes a raid group to fight a boss. This event wouldn't have any raid groups formed because the target wasn't a boss. How many people do you think there are in here right now? About forty-nine, right? Just when we get close, all the NPCs start talking about the special event starting soon." We both spoke in perfect unison as we spoke, to boost the volume of our voices without having to shout too hard.

"Actually," Keiko went on without me here, "we should do a count to know just how close we are. Everyone, when I touch you, sit down. If you're sitting, stand up for a minute." Our words must have rung true, because despite their grumbles and piercing looks, everyone moved to obey. Keiko quickly went through the crowd, tapping each player she came to on the shoulder and counting off how many there were. I followed along, doing my own count to double-check hers. In a short minute, we had gone through the whole room, then counted ourselves.

While the air was filled with the clanking and screeching sound accompanying everyone standing again, we both checked our counts against each other to ensure we had come out even. When everything was quiet again, we both said in loud voices, "There are exactly forty-eight people here right now. Meaning: everything will begin as soon as the next one arrives. It could be any second. Quickly, everyone form a party with those closest to you. When you are in a party of seven, sit down so we can see who has yet to get in a party."

The room erupted into a mess or noise, but the sound wasn't chaotic like before. Amidst it all, I could hear the sound of menus being operated and quick greetings being made. It was organized noise. From the surrounding crowd, the two men who had been most vocal, the tanned warhammer one and the blue-armor one stepped forward. "I don't know who you two are, but I don't really trust you," blue said, "I'll party with you so I can keep an an eye on you."

"I was thinking the same thing myself," warhammer responded, extending his hand. "Kovats," he introduced himself, shaking each of our hands while we responded with our own names.

"Lind," the the blue-armor one followed suit. After the introduction, they each looked at us with an angry expression. "You didn't give us your real names?" Lind demanded.

"Ah~ Sorry about that," I waved my arms frantically, trying to explain. "It's because we're twins, when we're dressed the same our names don't appear near our cursors. Here, see?" I quickly pulled up my menu and took off my half-cloak so our names would appear.

They kept glaring at me for another few seconds before Kovats sighed and waved his hand irritatedly. "Whatever, you two are weird, almost like cheaters..."

His piercing gaze shot through me and I quickly shook my head to deny. "No way, we're just new to online games!" When I finally got these two to stop glaring at me, everyone else had already formed their parties and sat down. The stragglers all made their way to us, joining our party until we had six members. The only one missing was the last person who still hadn't arrived yet.

"So, if you two know that we're about to fight a boss, do you have any info on it?" someone asked while they all sat, apparently not feeling like standing while they waited anymore. Part of it might have been that we may all die in the coming battle, well if we were right.

God, I hope we aren't right.

While I'd been traveling down a completely unrelated train of thought, Keiko was thinking intensely to try and puzzle out some bit of info. The slapped my arm to get me back on track, and I set to thinking as well. Then, the two of us bounced ideas back and forth as fast as we could in hopes of coming up with an answer. Any answer.

None of the NPCs ever mentioned a Boss. The quest information did mention a Boss, only referring to it as the 'elves' boss'. Besides the NPCs and quest information, we hadn't gotten any information from Argo. The other players with us had mentioned the elves dropping presents, and collecting the presents was supposed to get us a reward. That didn't seem related to the Boss though. Hadn't we picked up any more information? A tip somewhere?

The elves, Keiko pointed out. Yeah, they were singing. What were the words? As if branded into my brain, every word of that terrible song rang in my ears.

Slash 'em cut 'em drill 'em.

Bash 'em gut 'em kill 'em.

The more and more they fight,

the bloodier and bloodier

will be this Christmas night!

Nothing useful in the first part, it didn't sound like much other than their evil killing minds normal thoughts.

Break out the toy boxes,

let's give 'em a show!

We'll play 'em like foxes,

catch 'em like so!

Hold 'em and chain 'em,

then stick 'em and drain 'em.

The first two lines of that part stuck out. It was probably referring to the special event that was about to happen. While the rest of it may have to do with what would go on, maybe meaning there would be elves supporting the boss during the fight, the first line definitely indicated that those trapped toy boxes would play some role.

Nick likes his snacks raw,

better even still wriggling,

grins at their struggling,

right until he takes out his saw!

That was it! Nick, that must be the boss' name. And the last line clearly said he used a saw. That meant it would use Sword Skills.

They all want our presents,

but none want to give!

For that we resent 'em,

and stick 'em with a shiv!

Nothing much in there either...

It's how me make our Christmas merry!

Too bad for the humans though,

bleeding and bleeding on the new snow.

Dying and dyeing as red as new cherry!

Again, it just sounded like the depraved elves talking about killing like usual.

"Ok, here's what I'm thinking. The Boss is named 『Nick』 and uses a saw as its main weapon. The battlefield will have trapped toy boxes to avoid."

"Also, the elves will probably be supporting him during the fight, probably with long ranged attacks aimed at disabling us." Apparently Keiko believed more in the second part than I had. Still, it would be good to warn them of any possibilities. "Any more questions?"

"Yeah, how the hell do you know _any_ of that shit?!"

"It was from the elves'... so...ng..." I responded, though halfway through a blue light appeared on the opposite side of the large room. The last player had arrived! But we hadn't had the chance to split up the battle roles yet! Before I could take one step, the whole room shook violently, nearly throwing me off my feet. I slid back into the wall to keep my balance, but the feeling of my shoulder against the stone through my shirt quickly reminded me that I had to put my half-cloak back on. While it didn't offer much protection, any little bit helped. Also, without it we wouldn't receive the doubled passive effect from our «Stat Boost» passive for being equipped identically.

While I blazed through the menu at light speed, the area around us quickly grew bright, as if many spotlights were shining straight through the rock on all sides. All the players around shielded their eyes from a nonexistent light which only seemed to illuminate the other players in the vicinity. In the few moments after I had the half-cloak firmly wrapped around myself again, I grabbed hold of Keiko's hand. Whatever happened, we'd stick together like always. On either side, Lind and Kovats wrapped themselves around us. Despite not trusting us, I guess their tank habit of shielding their fragile party members took precedence.

All at once, the rock area surrounding us seemed to sweep outward, the floor disappearing beneath our feet, stretching out the walls, and upward, to a single point before it was gone completely. After an instant of weightlessness, I began falling. My knees bent automatically, but by the time I looked down to see how long the fall was, I'd hit the ground. Just a few centimeters apparently.

My eyes quickly swept all around, either the lights had dimmed somewhat or I'd just grown accustomed to them already. Whatever the case, I clearly saw that we were all standing in the middle of a large red circle. About the same size as the stone room we had been waiting in, fifteen meters(49ft) or so across, it fit all of us with enough room to almost move freely. Everyone slowly spread out to cover the circle a little more evenly, though for the most part they still stuck in seven person clumps, indicating the distinct parties.

Outside of the circle, there seemed to be a large grid, extending a long distance out in all directions. The grid itself appeared to be formed by off-white lines of light in midair. When I looked closely, between the lines appeared to be a slight haze. The floor here must be made of the same energy as that area we'd found outside the world, those magical crystal shards. It made sense, because nothing else in this world(that I knew of anyway) could float in midair. I stomped my foot down on the ground beneath me, but did not feel the strange ethereal surface as that outside this circle. So, this circular platform was being held up by something else. Unlike the hazy ground outside, the red was not at all transparent, so I couldn't tell by what it was held.

However, all around, I could see through the immaterial floor. And through that floor, I saw «Urbus», with most of the population of Aincrad packed into every possible place available. I looked up at the floor above as well, but was surprised to not find it. Instead, I found myself staring at all of us from above. I blinked a few times before I realized it was a giant mirror. I glanced to check how far it extended. About to the edges of the cliffs which rose in a circle around the city.

After thinking for a moment, I realized the reason for the giant mirror. In this world, mirrors didn't work like they did back on Earth. Here, they did not reflect light, which would become more and more dissipated the farther it traveled, (for example, the mirror in an eye doctor's office, which allows the ten foot long office to have a twenty foot line of sight without which you could not take an eye exam). In Aincrad, mirrors showed whatever they should reflect on the surface. Basically, instead of lengthening the view distance, making things harder to see, it shortened the distance, making it easier. By my estimates, we were somewhere between five and seven meters(16-22ft) above street level, enough to clear the tops of the buildings with a little extra room. With the mirror another five or so meters further above, that would allow the audience to watch the action from both above and below, without missing a thing.

They really had prepared a show. Except, what was going to happen exactly? The boss hadn't jumped out at us the moment we arrived. I didn't see any elves, nor trapped gift boxes. So, there must be more to this, but what?

I gulped, sure that everything would be explained soon enough.

Author's Note: Technically, Kovats and Lind are (sort of) actual characters, according to episodes 1 and 14 of the anime. ^_^


	78. Chapter 76

**Reindeer Games**** Chapter 76**

_Author Note: Thanks to ChromaLuke's suggestion, I'll put author notes in italics from no on. :3_

_I was wondering if I should split this into parts, but decided not to. Long chapter ahead! Though It's going to take a lot longer to write too..._

_Oh and yes, I really titled it Reindeer Games. :p_

After a minute, everyone quieted down after our sudden arrival in this strange field. Looking up into the mirror overhead, I looked at the crowd below, all faces turned up to look at us atop the platform. While looking up into the mirror, I actually manged to meet the gazes of a few people on the ground below. Looking down again, I opened my menu and checked the time. When was this going to start anyway? I was surprised the Boss didn't jump on us the moment we got here. Having us stand here so long gave us the opportunity to figure out the situation- well it would have if Keiko and I hadn't guessed it successfully earlier.

1:29 am. So, they were waiting for 1:30. Just a few more seconds... As I stared at the time, it the minute changed before my eyes, and the my menu closed on its own in the next instant. Quite a few surprised sounds went up all around, and I saw a number of players unsuccessfully waving, trying to open their menu again. So, no menus. However... I turned my back away from the majority of players, swiping my left hand downward and opening my menu, before swiping it away quickly. Guess they hadn't accounted for players that don't open their menu like normal.

Without menu access, it would be impossible to alter equipment, skills, or bring important items out of our inventories. That is to say, we could only use what we had out and on us right now. Even if I was able to use my menu, I couldn't with all these people here. They were already suspicious of us as it was, they would definitely start calling us cheaters if we did that.

Then, laughter seemed to ring throughout the entire area. It was the cackling, hoarse laughter of some sort of anime villain. I turned all around, but couldn't find whoever, or _whatever_ was making that sound. A swish, then a crash. I turned about-face, my focus instantly zeroing in on a large form standing atop the transparent flooring.

It was... not human. Nor was it really an animal... It was like, almost like a giant, super deformed humanoid reindeer. It stood on two legs, though its legs were obviously that of a four-legged animal. It had all the joints reversed, with one extra near its foot not present in humans, as well as blacked-hoofed feet. It's arms were human, but its face was... just... scary... It looked like they had taken a reindeer from a picture, distorted it and pulled out all of its features, like the long snout and pointed antlers, into grotesque shapes, then crossed it with a human, just enough that I couldn't classify it as an animal.

As warped as it was, it stood on two legs, albeit reindeer legs, and had a... human-enough face. It was already classified as a humanoid mob in my mind. And though it was furry like an animal, it was clothed. It seemed to be a shirt, or at least it was at one point. Now it was little more than shredded red cloth which covered a small portion of its massive chest. Beneath that were blue jeans, ripped off jaggedly at the knees. For the moment, no cursor appeared over its head.

All the while, it stood, unmoving, but still cackling crazily. As we all stared, it stopped without warning, then started speaking, in a creepy, nasally voice.

"Welcome. Welcome everyone, to this special, once in a lifetime show!" With close to Eight thousand people present, almost the entire surviving population within Aincrad, not one sound floated in the air at that moment, not so much as a cough or the sound of someone shifting their weight.

Absolute silence.

"I can see you're as excited as I am! Now, let's get this party started!" the maniac reindeer pumped its fist in the air, and the air around me suddenly charged with energy. In the left side of my vision, a new quest appeared. At the same time, the red cursor appeared above the giant reindeer's head. Ten bars of hp appeared, stacking atop one another, and finally its name. 『The Master of Games:』after a moment, the name scrolled upward, the second line saying, 『Nick』. It stayed that way, so averted my attention, I grabbing the quest window before it disappeared, since (supposedly) I wouldn't be able to open my menu to check the quest details again. My eyes quickly scanned over the contents of this new quest.

.

『Reindeer Games』

『Defeat Nick, The Master of Games, at his own game. 』

『Rules: Each party takes turns moving and fighting on the game board.』

『Access to the system menu is disabled during the game.』

『The game ends when either Nick is defeated, or there are no players remaining.』

『Note: each space on the game board may have a special effect.』

『Also, every space on the board requires the players' energy to stay afloat.』

.

So, they were changing the fight into a game? Instead of an all-out brawl, there seemed to be some very strict conditions as to how we would be able to attack the Boss. It didn't help that the instructions were as clear as a stone wall. The one thing that worried me the most had to be the last line though. What did it mean by 'requires energy'? It seemed to be the same floating surface we had been on in the sky outside Aincrad, but I hadn't noticed that requiring any sort of energy from us to stand on. Was it different inside, or was it just another part of the game? Besides, what type of energy was it talking about anyway? Could it mean our physical energy, meaning we would feel weak once we were out there, or maybe our actual hp. If that was the case, then everyone would have to constantly use potions to keep their life from draining away.

"First off, we determine the turn order!" Nick cackled, "Team leaders, you're up!" He waved his strangely human hand and big, strangely shaped dice appeared above the heads of various players in the crowd. In our party, the die hovered, spinning frantically, above Kovats' head, since he was the one who had invited everyone to the party earlier. Slowly, hands reached up, attempting to touch the giant dice in one way or another. However, when their hands met the spinning surface, the dice disappeared, a large number appearing in the air in its place.

I glanced all around. So, this was how the turn order would be determined. I briefly wondered how any cases of two parties getting the same number would be determined, but saw that none had, so it would not be an issue. We had a 3. Of all the numbers rolled, it put us second from last, the only number lower being a 1 on the opposite side of the field's central platform.

"Sorry guys," Kovats apologized for the low number, though one of the two party members I didn't know by name waved it off.

"No problem, I'd like to see everyone else go first, so we know what we're getting in to." The others quickly agreed. While they were talking, a new element appeared in my view. It wasn't a window, it was actually part of the HUD, which always floated in my vision- like my hp bar. This new section listed the numbers 1 to 8 down along the right side of my vision, with a white arrow pointing to the 1 at the top. Must be so we can always tell what party's turn it is, I figured. All the way at the bottom was the letter 'N', probably denoting when Nick would make his move.

"Now, without further ado: Let the games begin!" Nick shouted, pulling all attention to himself again. From here, all the other parties watched closely, while the one party who had either luckily, or unluckily rolled a 10, went first. The same furiously spinning die appeared in the air, and after a moment of hesitation, the leader of the first party, a man with skull shaped shoulder plates, reached out and tapped it, a large number 4 appearing to take its place. The number then shrank, apparently splitting up, and various numbers appeared above the heads of everyone in that party. They all looked up, confused at first.

"Come on, get on with it!" Nick shouted, throwing something at the group standing there unsure what to do next. On reflex, everyone jumped out of the way. Whenever something was thrown at you in a battle context in this world, you did _not_ want it to hit you. A number of players in the first party landed out on the grid outside the circle where the rest of us were standing, though it seemed that anyone else who might have accidentally jumped off what turned back by an invisible wall.

"That's more like it!" Nick shouted, cackling like a maniac while the round object he'd thrown landed, releasing a large explosion. Everyone flinched away, even after they'd thrown themselves far enough away to avoid damage.

"This is crazy," another of our random party members muttered. He seemed to be a bit chubby. While everyone else was staring in amazement, I took the opportunity to look over the rest of my party. I would have to rely on them here after all. According to the party HUD which had moved to the left side of my view to make room for the special one, these two had the names Max and Tanaka. However, I couldn't match up the names with the people because I hadn't been told their names, so nothing was displayed next to their cursor.

Of course they were all big guys with huge shields and heavy plate armor, so I quickly nicknamed them for their most obvious traits which would allow me to differentiate between them until I got their actual names. One look at them and I came up with Chubby, and Blondy. With that task finished, I turned my attention back to the matter at hand. Now that the shock of the explosion had mostly faded, the in the first party who had fallen into the field were standing again, their arms held out as if trying to balance while they looked straight down at the packed streets below.

"Go on now," Nick prodded them on. A few quickly started jogging, whichever way they were already facing. I immediately noticed the numbers above their heads decreasing. When they hit 0, all the guys suddenly stopped, falling backward as if they'd run into something. The ones still on the platform quickly caught on as well and moved to take a position near the rest of their party, which was rather scattered after all that.

Now that everyone had seen how it worked one time, most everyone had caught on. Any who hadn't were quickly taught by their friends. All around, shoulders raised as everyone's confidence improved.

"Good first move, good." Nick applauded, waving his hands as if trying to get the rest of the crowd to join. Of course no one did. From what I could tell, based on the party leader's roll, everyone was given so many points, used to move so many spaces on the grid board. I wasn't sure how the points were determined, but that would probably become clear the longer the game went on.

My train of thought was interrupted when Nick continued speaking. "Now, time for the next turn to begin, but first..." At the same time as he spoke, two other things happened in my field of view. The little white arrow indicating which party's turn it was to move slid down to the second group. And, the sections beneath the men in the field began to glow briefly. After a moment, most of the glowing died down until I could just tell the color was a little lighter than the squares around it. However, one square stayed lit up. Over a few moments, a large Christmas box rose out of the panel beneath him, as if being unpacked from a 2-dimensional space.

The box which took up most of the square then opened, a large monkey popping out and suddenly throwing its arms around the man before he could react.

"Oh no, that's the-" I gasped before a massive explosion tore across the field. Even from this distance, I could hear screams of anger and fright. Looking down, I saw a number of the people in the crowd duck for cover, and some begin to look as if they would flee entirely. However, when nothing else happened for a few moments, everyone looked back up to see the aftermath. When the smoke cleared, the man who had been attacked was still standing, with most of his hp intact even.

He shook himself, then shouted toward the giant demented reindeer, "It's gonna take a lot more than that to kill me!" This time, a round of cheers rose from below.

"Wow, that kind of thing might've killed us in one go," I muttered to Keiko, who nodded slowly, an amazed look on her face. There guys really must have tons of hp. It really would take a lot to finish them off. While the slightly burnt man downed a health potion another die appeared above the head of another player in the crowd. His hand shot up, punching the die lightly. A 5 appeared, then split to the seven men. I took note of the numbers above their heads before they could move into the field. Of course, the most obvious thing was that they were all multiples of five.

I also noted that the highest number among them was a 35. So, the points were determined by multiplying some number by five, but what? The next few turns passed without incident. In the fifth party, two more people landed on trapped squares, though one spawned a knife-wielding jack-in-the-box, which the tall man blocked with his huge shield, and the other was some sort of paralyzing gas, ineffective against someone with such high a high Strength stat. After the first couple parties went, everyone had gotten their bearings, and else moved without issue, now headed toward Nick, who I estimated to be about thirty, maybe thirty five squares away.

With the closest standing a just a few squares distance from our target, it was finally it was our party's turn to move. Kovats punched the die over his head, but this time, only rolled a 2. At the bottom of my vision, a number appeared. When I glanced up, I saw it was the same as the one over my head. Good, because looking up while I ran would not work out so well.

Of course, the other thing I noticed was that our movement numbers were way, _way_ higher than any of our other party members. 40. The highest among them was a 10. Of course, now that I had my own number, it was easy to figure out what it meant. If he'd rolled a 2, and 40 was the end result, it was multiplied by 20. 20 was my AGI parameter. Now that I knew what it was multiplied by, I could figure out how many points I would have even before the system told me. It was surprising though, these guys really must have fed all of their points into their STR, if the highest among them had just 5 points in it. Of course, all that STR was why these guys were the only ones who had shook off those elves' paralyzing attacks.

I realized that everyone else had began moving off of the platform, out into the field. I stepped down as well, feeling the familiar, perfectly smooth, and somehow bouncy sensation of the magical platform beneath my feet. Looking down at the lines tracing the squares, I measured them to be approximately one meter by one meter. One meter squares meant that Nick was just thirty-five meters away. As I continued walking forward, the number at the bottom of my vision slowly decreased. When it reached 10 points remaining, all of the tanks in our party had stopped already, as far as they could go.

"Hey, should we go ahead or stick with you?" I asked Blondy, who had the highest AGI of the tanks. Able to move 10 squares, he was just one space to my left.

"I'd say stick around, we shouldn't split up too much if we're going to fight together." I nodded, then turned to Keiko, who shared the square with me. Since we still had 10 points left, we walked around in the 4 closest squares, running out of points one space behind Blondy. Chubby After our points were spent, Keiko reached out, tapping an invisible wall in midair. I reached out, rubbing my hand along the immaterial surface.

As the turns changed, all of our squares lit up, but no traps went off. "Guess you saved me," I grinned at Keiko, since I would have triggered a trap if she wasn't on the square too. She giggled slightly, grinning herself.

When everyone turned back to look at the last party, I finally realized something. A raid group was composed of seven parties. We had eight here. Somehow having forgotten the last person, the reason my party on had six people, the final party to move was just a single player. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was just noticing him as well, because when he stepped up the edge of the platform, a hard in his eyes, gasps not only escaped from all the people involved in the battle, but the entire crowd as well.

It was the black-haired boy. However, his appearance had changed significantly from the last time I recalled seeing him, some number of weeks ago. Now, he was dressed in pure black, a very, _very_ expensive looking long coat on, a sword I didn't recognize on his back, and no visible armor whatsoever. We'd gotten into this raid due to a game bug. How the _hell_ did he get here?

For some reason I couldn't understand, everyone started screaming. Angry screaming. I wasn't sure what they were saying, Beater? I'd never heard that word before, but it did not sound like a good thing. Even most the crowd was screaming abusively at him. His eyes narrowed for a moment, a hurt look in them as he lowered his head. Then, he drew his sword, his expression changing completely. His hand shot up, hitting the die and rolling a 5.

185.

185 movement points? My jaw dropped as he shot off the platform. While a number of players stood adamantly, forcing him to travel in a winding path, Keiko and I stood to the side as he tore through our square. Straight past, Blondy reached out angrily, but the black-haired boy twisted suddenly, vaulting over top of him and continuing his mad dash. All the other players reached out, trying to grab and hold him as well, but he wove through everyone as if they hardly existed.

Raising his sword, he brought it into an arc and dealt a devastating blow to the boss before it could even attempt to defend itself. The crazy reindeer squealed angrily, spinning around a number of times as half of its first hp bar depleted. It crashed to the ground while the black-haired boy turned back around. After all of that, he had 100 movement points remaining.

Snarling angrily, the giant reindeer drew its weapon from its back. As we had guessed, it was a giant saw, the single bladed kind used for cutting down trees. However, this saw was huge, almost as long as I was tall. The black-haired boy leaped forward, slashing at the deformed monster, but it parried his first attack, attempting a counter, which was blocked as well. As the two stood in the same square, blades flashing as they attacked, blocked and countered, all the noise from before vanished. Everyone stared, hardly able to see as the fight continued for a number of seconds. However, I noticed that every time he attacked, his movement points reduced by 10.

At the last moment, his eyes widened, showing that he realized this as well. With just 8 points remaining, he leaped four squares back, dashed sideways another three, and finally forward one, putting two empty squares diagonally between him and the boss. He quickly downed a potion before his turn ended, and I noticed that his hp had dropped about 25% during the fight, probably from glancing blows. On the other hand, he had managed to take out most the first bar of the boss' hp. There were still nine more to go, but taking that much in one turn, on his own even, was incredibly impressive.

His square lit up at the end of his turn, but flashed, indicating he'd hit a trap. I grit my teeth, worried because he was an AGI type like us. He couldn't take the same kind of punishment these crazy tanks could. However, instead of a trapped gift box rising out of his square, a large red number 3 appeared. It split up, into three lights, which shot over to nearby spaces. Those squares lit up, a group of seven 『Naughty Elves』 appearing in each space.

Well, that would make this fight a lot harder. Above the elves, dice appeared, which they didn't hesitate to hit. They came up with 1, 2, and 3. I glanced over at the turn order, where the letter A appeared, sliding into place the turn before my group, B and C taking the places between us and the black-haired boy's turn.

Now that those steps had finished, a die appeared above the demented Reindeer and I tensed. Just how much AGI, or whatever the monster equivalent, did this thing have? While letting out a wicked, high pitched chuckle, Nick reached up and tapped the spinning object with one finger. Above his head, his roll appeared, a 4. The number transformed. 200. I only had the time to see the number and figure he had 50 AGI, or some equivalent, before he seemed to vanish.

My eyes moved, a flash of motion giving me the only indication of where to look. Toward the right, the Reindeer stopped dead in front of one group, number 4 if I remembered correctly, spinning around and sending a long horizontal slash across the three squares adjacent to him before the men standing there could even respond. They were all blown back, apparently able to be knocked from their square. On their backs one square further from the Boss, they slowly started pulling themselves back to their feet, shields raised defensively.

However, the massive reindeer was already ten squares farther left, hitting group 6 from the side. They were prepared, but the three consecutive slashing attacks from Nick's saw sent them all to the ground as well. Moving just one square in our direction, toward the platform that is, he swung a single powerful strike at the group standing a little closer than we were, before shooting far off to the right side. I estimated about forty or fifty spaces between myself and the boss now.

Beneath us, the crowd stood in shock. Every group which had suffered an attack had fallen near half health. Also, now that I was paying attention to hp, I noticed that Blondy one square ahead of me had lost almost a third of his max hp. He hadn't been attacked, so...

"Hey, uh," I started speaking, so I could get his name.

"It's Tanaka," he said quickly, eyes still glued to the reindeer.

"You've lost hp, but you didn't get attacked." I saw him glance back at me, then upward, toward his hp bar.

"What the-" he started, but quickly shook his head and pulled out a potion to drink. I looked around, noticing a similar missing chunk of hp in almost everyone in the field. There were a couple here and there with less missing, but none were full health any more. Glancing into the top right corner of my view, I saw the green block at the end of my bar filled, indicating I hadn't lost a single point. Was it the energy draining thing the quest window had talked about? That had to be it, I couldn't see any other explanation. The longer we stood in this field, the more everyone's health would drain away. Actually-

"Everyone! Check your hp! Standing in this field drains hp over time, so make sure you drink potions to keep it from falling too low!" I screamed to warn them. If their life fell too far without them noticing and they received a powerful attack, they could die before they have a chance to heal.

All at once, I saw most everyone pull out potions to drink. There, that would definitely help. Another problem with standing in this field was the whole turn mechanic we'd been forced into. If it was an all out brawl, we would be delivering constant damage to the Boss without hesitation, and the battle would finish much faster. Since we stood around like this, only a few of us able to move at once, the battle would stretch out much, much longer.

"So, if this field drains hp, why is yours still full?" the question came from behind me. When I turned back to see Lind standing in his blue armor, one space behind me, I was glad that I'd already thought up an answer.

"We have the «Battle Healing Skill»."

"Above level 50?" he asked immediately.

"Yeah..." I answered again, hesitantly this time. To that, he just raised an eyebrow, making a face which spoke a skeptical 'oh really?' Why 50? Was it just a random number or was there a reason for it? I shook my head, this wasn't getting me anywhere.

I turned away from him, switching my attention back to what was going on. It was the first group's turn again, but when I looked around for them, I realized that they were all behind me, back near the platform. So, I turned back around again. Oriented from the platform toward the boss' original position, they were on the right side of the platform, though now that I was looking back from the other direction, they appeared to be on the left. This time, they had gotten a good roll, a 6, so they all headed toward the Boss, though it was far off. They couldn't reach it, but they all formed into a defensive line about twenty spaces in front of it.

One by one, the rest of the groups took their turns, though the demented reindeer had retreated too far for anyone to reach immediately. Instead, they all formed together to make a powerful wall of defenders.

The first group of elves got their first turn, the group in the center of the three. They only rolled a 2, but it gave all of the elves 20 points total. With the black-haired boy only two squares away, they all rushed forward, encircling him before barraging him from all sides. Luckily, their low roll only allowed on attack from each, but despite his best efforts, two attacks slipped through his defense, and the paralysis symbol appeared atop his hp bar. After our turn, the other two groups of elves would fall on him. Everyone else was forty or fifty spaces away, off in the opposite direction where the Boss was. We were the last group still in this section of the field, though there were still almost twenty spaces between us and him.

Kovats rolled, getting a 6. When I saw the 120 appear in the bottom of my vision, I had to sigh. "Guys, it looks like we're splitting up. We have to go help him."

"Why? He's just a dirty beater- he deserves what he's got coming to him." Lind answered from behind us."

"I don't know what that means, but I'm not about to let someone die in front of me," Keiko said with her hands on her hips, glaring at Lind. "Let's go." With her saying that, we both ran past Tanaka on either side, taking the most direct route we could toward the black-haired boy. It was farther than I had guessed, needing a full 25 points before we reached space adjacent to the elf off his corner, in the direction of where the boss had been.

Already at a full sprint, we brought our swords up ten spaces out, ten meters. They began glowing green as we jumped, flying the full distance, until we came down, slashing down as hard as we could with «Sonic Leap» directly into the elves twisted face. It wasn't enough to kill the monster instantly, but the strong attacks were enough to knock it off balance. Before we lost our momentum, we both thrust our daggers straight out as fast as we possibly could, driving them straight through the elf's neck and all the way into the elf behind that one.

I glanced at the number at the bottom of my vision. 73. That would only allow for six or seven more sword skills, depending on how many spaces we moved in between. While the first elf exploded into tiny fragments, the second began to swing its butcher knife. We both sidestepped, bringing our swords low, they slashing diagonally upward. I grit my teeth as I forced my arms to reverse direction when they reached shoulder height to complete the «Reverser». Multiple hit sword skills were the hardest to reproduce, because they required us to suddenly reverse the direction of our attacks.

While that elf vanished we both turned. We were each aiming for one of the elves on his other corners. It took one point to move into the same square as the black haired boy, as I brought my dagger parallel to the ground to activate another charge type skill. Suddenly closing the small space in an instant, I swung my dagger slanting upward, spinning it around to maintain the momentum, then diagonally up from the other side. After that, my dagger immediately jumped right, into the starting position for «Edge Thrust». Having anticipated the elf's counterattack, I swung the dagger across from my right, aiming directly for its neck to get a critical hit. My feet slid across the smooth surface below, spinning around as I swung the dagger back, stabbing directly backward into the monster's weak point again.

With two shattering sounds telling me our targets had been finished, I checked my remaining points. 52 left. And three more elves to fight. Even if I could finish them all with two attacks, there would still be one left when we ran out. And right after, the other fourteen would be on us.

"Onii-chan!" As Keiko spoke, the plan she had in mind rushed through the bond, and I sheathed my dagger to clasp hands with her. We quickly swept our feet under the black-haired boy to knock him to the ground, then took a deep breath.

We spread our feet to meet the requirement to start «Whirl», and brought our swords around. However, with our hands clasped, we didn't spin around in place. Instead, our center of gravity, where our hands were clasped together in the center of the square, allowed us to spin around the outside edge of the space, so our swords would reach all adjacent enemies. It took two full revolutions before they died, leaving us with just 32 points remaining.

We had finished the immediate enemies, so what would we do with the last of our points? Grabbing the black-haired boy by his ankles, we turned and ran back toward the platform, dragging him with us. About halfway to the platform, we swung left, making it most of the way back to our party, only seven spaces between us and Chubby, who I quickly renamed Max, at the back of the group.

After we stopped, panting heavily, the black-haired boy said from the ground, "Thanks." Our turn ended, luckily without any traps going off, and the other two groups of elves rolled. The first rolled low with a 2, not making it all the way to us, while the second rolled a 4. We prepared ourselves as they moved in, but after the minute or so which had passed since he was originally stabbed, the paralysis wore off and the seven elves, only with enough points for a single attack, couldn't break through all three of us defending.

Strangely, after we successfully drove off the attack, a mixture of applause and booing came from below. I looked down at the crowd, who were all looking at us when the black-haired boy's turn came again. Despite only rolling a 3, he had 111 point to move, meaning he had 37 points of Agility. That was thirteen levels worth of points. Also, with a higher level sword than ours, the strength requirement was probably about 10, meaning he was at least level 15 or 16.

He shot forward into the party of elves, cutting them down one after another, only three left of the original fourteen when he hopped back, running out of points in the same square as he had started. He drank another potion, since the life draining field had sapped his nearly down to half again as his turn ended.

With all of the tall men standing between us and the Boss, I had to look up in the mirror overhead to watch as Nick took his turn, again dashing all around and hacking away mercilessly with his giant saw. While everyone was better prepared this time, they still couldn't stand long against the powerful strikes and everyone was sent sprawling backward a number of spaces before Nick ran out of points, retreating again before his turn was over.

Everyone cycled through the next turn, again chasing the giant reindeer, which was again, just past the edge of their available movement. When the last few elves had their turn come up, they rolled a high 6, but it didn't matter because we struck them down the moment the approached.

Since Nick was retreating each turn, just out of range of all the tanks, we would need to change tactics. So far I saw two options. Either everyone would need to spread out, so wherever he went there would always be a group close enough to attack that turn. Or, a more difficult plan, though it would be more successful if we could pull it off, would be to encircle the Boss, trapping it so that it wouldn't be able to run away. After a moment of consideration, I forgot about the second plan. Even if we trapped him, no one could keep their footing against his onslaught of attacks, so he would just break through the wall and escape.

I was brought back to the matter at hand when Kovats hit the floating die again. Not bad, a 3 this time. While it only gave the fastest 15 points, enough to reach the main body of our force ahead, we had 60, enough to move in and at least get a few attacks on the Boss. "Guys, head the other way." I said to my nearby party members. "He keeps jumping around, so chasing him all over the place won't do any good. We have to spread everyone out.

"Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing Lind answered. Everyone started walking back toward the platform, spreading out to cover more area. Now that they had positioned themselves, Keiko and I took a deep breath together.

"You coming in behind us?" I asked quickly. The black-haired boy nodded in reply. Another deep breath and we shot forward, everyone moving aside as we tore through the main line. We both sheathed our swords, waiting a moment before unsheathing them again and sweeping the blades up, around, and back down to our sides, the blades taking on a dull red glow. As we closed in, ten meters, five meters, the glow grew, expanded, and at the moment when Nick raised his saw, a haughty look on his twisted, half-animal face, our blades flashed.

All at once, I kicked the ground as hard as I could to activate «Flash», while I struck out as fast as my virtual body possibly could. Without any physical movement, I instantly warped from three spaces- three meters in front of the giant, to some distance behind. My hand swept up, then down as I sheathed my sword, turning around as the red streaks hanging in the air slowly faded away. Unlike the one other time I used the technique, there were two sets this time, all swirled around together from Keiko and my attack hitting together. However it worked out, we had a single movement point remaining, so we stepped one space closer, since our «Flash» had left us nearly ten spaces away, on the opposite side. Unlike at the end of our last turn, a massive round of cheering and applause exploded from below as the Boss' second bar of health disappeared.

"That works really well," I noted, "if nothing else goes wrong, we could finish this in the next eight rounds, even if no one else can catch him."

Keiko grinned, "Well, at least now we know why the event tried to make sure only tanks got in, AGI types are way stronger here. Nick wouldn't stand a chance against a normal raid group." I nodded, smiling myself.

The black-haired boy went again, engaging in another incredible clash with the boss, where he managed to take out his third hp bar. Seven to go. This time, he moved to end his turn on our square again, probably thinking it wasn't trapped because we had already landed on it. I wasn't so sure. Since these were magical, they might not trigger sometimes, and trigger other times. Well, as long as Keiko was standing here, it was the safest position on the board.

This turn, after Nick hacked away at main body of tanks, almost landing enough damage to kill one man before others covered for him, he had enough points remaining to attack us as well. While the black-haired boy parried a number of attacks before receiving a glancing blow, we used the opening to deal some more damage, though we couldn't go all out with another person so close or we might hit him by accident. By the time he stepped back after receiving the blow, we had only taken out about a quarter of one bar.

Without the black-haired boy to block, we both raised our swords to parry the next incoming attack, just managing to stop the saw blade with our strength combined. After a couple more tough blocks, Nick was nearly out of movement points and backed off again, moving to a spot near the starting platform.

As the next round began, Kovats shouted from his place across the field. "Everyone, stop chasing the Boss and spread out, that way it can't keep kiting us all over the place." Kiting was a game term I'd learned not long after this all started. It was basically the method of attacking, then backing off to avoid counterattacks. Usually, it was useful for people under attack by more mobs than they could handle at once, but I'd never heard of monsters using it before. It wasn't a tactic that worked very well due to SAO's battle system, and most monsters had a pretty simple, head-on method of fighting.

What allowed it to happen here was the turn based constraint this 'game' forced on us, as well as the very low mobility of most everyone involved. Supposedly, the only ways to combat kiting were to have more mobility than the one kiting you- obviously not something we had in this case, do something to slow them down- also not a realistic plan, and to trap your target. As each party moved in various directions, beginning to fill this section of the field, I figured this was the closest we could come to trapping it. When I looked toward the closest side of the field, I figured it went about fifty or so spaces from the central platform.

If it was fifty spaces in each direction, that made about a 100x100 grid. Meaning... 10,000 spaces... "Crap." Both of the others sharing the space with me turned with curious looks. "I hadn't considered... the board is way too big for us to actually cover the whole thing. If there's any empty area, the Boss can just end his turn there so no one can reach him."

"Ah..." the black-haired boy said in a low voice.

"Everyone, stop spreading out, the field is too big to cover everywhere," Keiko shouted.

Everyone looked for a moment, then one man yelled, "Hah, told you so! We can't cover a field this big!" at someone he'd probably been arguing with. So, others had started to realize the same thing as us. Luckily, only the first three parties had begun spreading out. Everyone else still had their turns coming up, so they could all continue pursuing the Boss. With more traps set off this turn, everyone moved in, though the closest still fell short by about three spaces.

When our turn came up, I shouted, "everyone, if you can tank him on his turn, we can attack on ours. Like that, we can take him down."

"Hurry it up then, this field is seriously killing us. We're running out of pots already!" a voice shouted back, many more chiming in their agreement.

"Ok." I looked over at Kovats, hoping he would roll high this turn.

1. Shit. I walked up, moving into place behind the main body of tanks. Everyone stared at us angrily. We just shrugged, nothing we could do about a bad roll. Following us, the black-haired boy's luck was no better, even with his incredible AGI parameter, it wasn't enough to engage the boss, so he settled in our square again.

Nick unleashed another ferocious barrage of attacks against the front line of defenders, though they weathered it well, always shifting to deflect the attacks to new targets. After he retreated another twenty or so spaces, he snickered as his square flashed.

"Time to really get this party started!" A large 1 appeared in the air above the evil reindeer, who sneered, laughing in his high, cackling voice while it transformed into a ball of light, descending two spaces in front of him. From that square, a massive hoard of little elves appeared. A single die spun overhead, one knife-wielding hand coming up to tap it. Only rolling a 1, this massive group of elves was placed all the way at the bottom of the queue.

That also meant it was their turn to go. Rolling a 4, they all had 40 movement points, though half were spent front line. Spreading out along the entire span, they hacked at the frightened men, who staggered back as the formation fell to the attackers. The sound of shattering glass reached my ears for the first time during this fight. Three people died to the sudden attack.

Screams erupted below. Surely, many of these people were from the «Starting City», only leaving because there was a special event in another safe area. This was probably the first time someone had died in front of their eyes. As the next round began, everyone held a grim expression, trying to ignore the panic in the streets below. Just facing the insane reindeer boss was bad enough, but an army of elves too? This was quickly getting out of hand.

Through the gaps in the front line, I tried counting the elves that opposed us. I could only get to fifty before I lost count. "Do we help with the elves or keep after the Boss?" I asked quietly, intending for only Keiko and the black-haired boy to hear, but the player in the adjacent square overheard.

"Are you crazy, you have to help take care of those elves! If you just focus on the boss, they'll kill us all before this is finished." Hearing him shout, everyone else turned angry glares on us again.

"You better help us out, you guys are our attackers. We're tanks, we can't take out all these things on our own." Others spoke similarly. The rest of the round was spent with each party initiating small clashes against the hord of elves blocking out path. When it was getting close to our turn, I turned to the black-haired boy.

"What are you going to do?" I asked, whispering into his ear to avoid being overheard this time.

"I'm going after the boss. If we just keep fighting his minions, they'll keep spawning and we'll never win," he answered with a pained face. He didn't speak quietly, so everyone nearby heard, spreading his words through the rest of the raid group in a few short moments. All eyes turned to glare at him again, and a few people even started booing. One man was bold enough to threaten him and say that if he tried to LA the boss, they would kill him once the battle was over. Hearing this, the black-haired boy looked down, his jaw clenched.

So, they didn't want this guy to get the LA, or Last Attack. Seeing as only the three of us had even touched the Boss, there was a good chance of that being exactly what happened. For some reason, everyone hated him, though I had no idea why. I didn't even know his name. Hating this person, of course they wouldn't want him to get the LA. The reason being, getting the last attack on a Boss awarded the player rare and powerful equipment unlike anything else available. A special sword dropped by a Boss to the the last attacker would be incredibly powerful, useable for many, many floors, if not until the very top floor of Aincrad.

"Hey," I said quietly, moving my hand up to tap his cursor. From the menu that appeared, I selected 『Add to Party』. A message was sent to both him and our party leader to accept. If both did, he would be added to our party. Hopefully it would allow all three of us to move on the same turn. When Kovats looked over from his spot on the right flank of the line, I held a thumbs up in the air. "If we can all move together, we'll clear a path for you so you can focus on taking out more of his hp. Once we've cleared out some of the elves, we'll come help too." I spoke to the black-haired boy who stood behind me meeting Kovats' gaze steadily. With a small nod, the tall warhammer wielding man touched the green button showing in the window in front of him.

I turned around, my eyes meeting his. "Don't worry, we'll cover you," Keiko grinned, patting his shoulder. Hesitatingly, he tapped the button to accept our request. A moment after, a seventh name appeared at the bottom of our party list. 『Kirito』.

"Kirito... Kirito... I've heard that name somewhere before..." I said under my breath, trying to think. I know I'd heard it, but where?

"I would be surprised if you hadn't. Of course, I'd also be surprised if you hadn't heard everything else they say about me," he said with a dark expression.

"Then be surprised, because we haven't. What could you possibly do to make _everyone_ angry?" I asked. However, our turn must have started while we were talking, because a 100 appeared at the bottom of my vision. That made me glance over, seeing that there were only seven parties listed now. Another glance and I saw a 185 hovering above Kirito's head. My idea worked. Having the three of us together would make this a lot easier.

"I'm counting on you," Kirito said quietly. Even though Kovats, Lind, and the others were engaging elves on the right flank, everyone's eyes were glued to us. Even when I glanced down, no one was looking over that way. All eyes on us, let's make it good, I silently said.

Keiko nodded, raising her weapon. Exhaling, we shot forward, Kirito keeping on our heels even as we reached a full sprint. Raising our swords to our side, we passed through the front line, a swarm of elves directly beyond. All the adrenaline rushed to my head as I automatically counted ten on the square directly ahead, even more on both spaces adjacent. It only took five points to reach here, so we had another 95 to take out as many of the monsters as we possibly could.

"Ooh!" we shouted together, slashing horizontally across the entire front of the group with everything we had. For the first time since losing the System Assist, my sword moved faster than a basic, unboosted skill. As daggers shot out to counter, we stomped down, ducking low to initiate another «Whirl», clearly the most effective Sword Skill we had against so many monsters.

As I slid my feet across the smooth ground, I was aware of Keiko's sword sliding past, right over my shoulder, within centimeters of my neck as we both executed the attack directly next to each other. When we reached the end of the full spin, all of the elves within the square had been sent hurtling back, some dying from our attacks already. From there, we turned to face in opposite directions, a whoosh of black flying between us as Kirito rushed the boss. With our remaining points, we let loose everything we had, leaving just enough to retreat two spaces behind the front line.

"We're backing off!" I warned Kirito right before we moved. He quickly executed attacks to use his last extra points, then turned and fled back in our direction as we jumped behind the line of tanks, just before the goblins which remained nearby had a chance to block the way. Panting heavily, the two of us slid to the ground to rest until our turn came again. Kirito stood like a statue, not even seeming to breath, no fatigue showing in his figure whatsoever. It was like he did this daily.

For us, fighting like this- swinging our weapons as fast as System assisted Sword Skills was so draining, I guess it was lucky we only got to use so many per turn, or there's no way we could have kept it up this long. Each one took everything we had, and we could still only get our most basic attacks on the same level as regular Sword Skills, before they were even boosted.

For the next three turns which followed, we continued fighting the elves, and he kept widdling down the Nick's hp. Now that we weren't pursuing, and holding our ground instead, Nick wasn't retreating, but ending his turn within a few spaces of his last turn's position.

Our biggest problem was after each turn had completed. Every round, more and more elves spawned. The line, holding up to four players on each space, originally stretched five spaces long and two deep, but slowly dwindled with the passing rounds. As each round passed, the elves would undoubtedly manage to finish one or more of the guardians, causing another outcry from crowd below, and the line would crumple in just a little more. Even our party leader, Kovats, and the blond haired Tanaka fell.

"We're almost there, just keep pushing!" and similar shouts erupted from the line all over with each turn that passed. And each turn, traps triggered with increased frequency, multiple explosions wracking the players caught in the affected space.

There was nothing more we could do for the line against so many opponents. There were upward of one hundred elves in the swarm, which had just finished encircling the entire party, forcing the line to collapse into a 3x3 square. Everyone was out of potions, their hp slowly draining into the magical floor. With the next round of attacks from Nick and his wretched elves, casualties would increase greatly. In the single space in the center of the square, the three of us, who everyone now looked to as the only hope for victory, stood, perfectly unscathed despite the increasingly aggressive attacks. Kirito had made sure to keep an eye on his hp, to keep it near full without exhausting his potion supply too quickly. Even then, he was running low as well. Everyone else had taken their turns this round, with just our turn standing between the raid group and the coming slaughter.

"We finish it right now," Kirito said quietly. We had to, or most of our defenders would fall. Without them, we wouldn't be able to continue attacking each turn. Kirito would end up paralyzed, unable to fight, and we would all die. I took a deep breath. Nick only had one bar of hp left. If we all attacked at once, we could beat that evil reindeer.

"Six, six, six!" Lind shouted. With Kovats gone, he had become the new party leader. With sweat running down his face, he grit his teeth and closed his eyes. His fist thrust up into the air as everyone prayed for a high roll.

4. Cheers erupted all around. "Good enough for me!" he shouted happily, a look of incredible relief on his face. We had 80 points, and Kirito had 148. It might be a bit close, but I felt we could manage it.

We took a couple steps back, toward the back edge of our space, then dashed forward. There were three players kneeling down, hands cupped near the ground. With a running start, we stepped into their waiting hands and they all heaved with everything they had, launching us over the surrounding elves, high into the air. As we sailed through the air, our movement points decreased over the the fifteen spaces between us and that damned reindeer.

Their aim was dead on. As we came down, falling fast, we were set to land in the same square as the giant monster. All our swords raised high, flashing downward toward the top of Nick's horned head. A large grin spread over his face. Right before our weapons made contact, his saw flew up, deflecting all the attacks and sending us hurtling backward. I flipped full over once in the air before I came crashing down, right on my back.

Staggering back to my feet, my vision blurred from bashing my head against the floor. I tried shaking it off, but Kirito was already rushing forward to engage the Boss. Being thrown hadn't used any movement points, but we had to use five to make it back to Nick again, leaving us just 60 to fight.

Kirito was already sending attacks all over the place as he engaged the giant reindeer. His points were steadily dropping, though he still had quite a few left. We rushed in, flanking the Boss and attacking as well. With all three of us, his hp steadily dropped, reaching the halfway point, then the red zone. However, we just didn't enough points to finish it.

"Forget about moving, we'll just stay here!" Kirito shouted as we stopped with just 10 points remaining. Another attack would use all the points we had left to retreat from the square. Kicking thoughts of retreat from my mind, I brought my blade over my head again, swinging down into Nick's awkwardly bent leg. The rest of my movement points depleted, as well as Keiko's who had cut into his other leg. Kirito ran out in the next moment. The space beneath us flashed quickly, and a die appeared above Nick's head.

We frantically continued slashing with everything we had, but with the tiniest sliver of hp, Nick neatly hopped two squares backward, out of ranged of our attacks. He released a hideous bout of laughter as we all pushed against the invisible wall at the end of our space.

"It's showtime!" he squealed. Behind, I suddenly heard the sound of heavy metal. I spun around to see the elves pulling large coils of chain from under their giant, floppy red hats. Flinging the chains all around, they quickly entangled most of the tanks, unable to fight back against the long range attacks.

Long range attacks... I looked up at Nick, the tiny sliver of hp remaining probably only being a point or two. If only we still had «Weapon Throwing»... I grit my teeth angrily. At this rate, we would have to wait until the next turn before we could finish it. In that time, we would lose a lot of good men.

"Who cares if we don't have «Weapon Throwing» anymore!? Keiko shouted suddenly." I turned to look at her, who had just picked up on my train of thought, and realized what she was thinking a moment before she moved. "That doesn't stop us from throwing them anyway!" After shouting that, she unsheathed her dagger, drawing it up into the position for the «Single Shot» basic skill.

Without system assist or even the skill it required, she took a step forward like a baseball pitcher, and flung the knife with all her strength. The weapon flew through the air, spinning wildly, until it embedded itself in the massive reindeer's chest with a _chiin_ sound. His hp bar seemed to flicker slightly, as the last point or two was removed by one of the weakest possible methods of attack in this world.

"No way..." the words slipped from Kirito's lips on my left as we stared at the Boss. For a moment, it stood still as a statue, then a deep frown spread across its face for the first time.

"You two are not going to ruin my game this time!" You two? This time? Before I could even begin to imagine what he was talking about, Nick exploded, shattering into glowing shards like shattered glass.

As the shards floated quickly upward into the night sky, I saw that where Nick had been standing, instead of empty space, a figure similar enough to see that it was still the same enemy stood. While the color of his fur had darkened, his tattered red shirt was gone, and his horns were longer, it was definitely still Nick.

"That damned reindeer..." I muttered. Somehow, he had survived when his health depleted. It looked like he had transformed, the same way 『The Great Boar Lord』 did when we killed that first boar. In the middle of staring, Keiko jump high into the air. When I glanced over, I saw she had caught her dagger, which had been launched overhead by the explosion. Lucky.

Turning my attention back to the reindeer, I saw it's cursor appear, now named 『The Horned Terror』. It only had two bars of health this time, but something about it made me feel like this might be even harder than before.

Opening its mouth, an entirely different voice issued forth than before. With a strange double tone, like he had two voices speaking at the same time, "We're no longer in you kingdom. This is the Demon King's dominion!" he roared. I didn't even try to figure out what he was saying anymore, and just stashed it all away to think about later. After we finished him once and for all.

"Now, I'll take care of you two before we continue," the no-longer giddy reindeer glared while growling at us. Then, he did something that surprised everyone watching. Nick opened his menu, which most people probably didn't even know was possible for anyone but players. Of course, I noticed that he used his left hand for it, since I still had trouble remembering to use my left hand sometimes.

With a few taps, round crystal appeared in midair. It was almost entirely transparent, only a slightly white in the center, though the glow emanating from it made it easier to see in against the nighttime background. The sneering reindeer grabbed the crystal and held it high in the air, shouting, "See? I have the power here! Transform!" as soon as the final word escaped the giant monster's twisted mouth, I felt a shudder run up through my feet. It was my first time feeling the powerful surge. What was it?

As I continued staring forward, I realized. It was magic, the one thing missing from this world. Directly beneath us, the ground began to glow. As I looked down, all the shimmering white lines which divided the spaces of the board disappeared in a large square, a much brighter line appearing around the edges of the one large space. There were two spaces between us and two spaces out on each side. That made it a 5x5 square ending at the back of our square, and one space behind Nick. I felt the magical floor shudder again, and braced myself, clasping hands with Keiko just before a large wave of power washed over us.

"Guh!" I turned to look back as Kirito was sent flying away by the blast. So, it was just the two of us against this thing.

"Now..." without finishing the thought, the dark furred, or should I say, 『The Horned Terror』 flew toward us. We drew our swords just in time to deflect its first powerful attack, but were sent staggering back into the invisible barrier at the end this miniature arena. "Transform!" another wave of power emanated outward as the Boss raised its hand into the air, which I saw was still holding the clear crystal.

Without knowing what was going to happen, we both held still, only to have a huge explosion send us flying. I landed hard, rolling back to my feet in preparation for another attack, but found myself standing one space outside the little battlefield the Boss had created. If I couldn't get back in, I couldn't fight. "Transform!" As he shouted again, the field changed shape, elongating and becoming more skinny so it included my square as well.

I drank a potion quickly, while thinking to myself, that crystal allows him to change the floor here. So, it has the power to control these surfaces made of magical shards... I wasn't sure how that information might be of help, but it seemed important, so I stored it away for now. Running forward, I raised my sword, clashing with the giant reindeer. However, my strength alone was no match for him, so I glanced my blade off, ducking to avoid the attack and drawing my dagger. With a flick of my wrist, swung the blade up diagonally from one side, swished it around my side, then back up the other. As I dashed past, I flipped the blade to put it back in a forward-hand position, since «Double Undercut» was the only attack I could use while holding it backhanded.

A swish from behind, and I ducked automatically. A large saw flew overhead, and would have torn me in half if I hadn't ducked. Feeling another attack coming, I jumped, spinning around as I brought my sword across from the left. The reindeer had attacked low, his saw scraping against the invisible floor while my attack swung, too short to hit him at this distance.

After I landed I spun on my heel and used my momentum to continue running away. Now past the Boss, I slid to a stop near Keiko again. Turning back, we raised our blades together. My two dagger hits had hardly even put a dent in its hp. This battle was going to be hard, especially since he could change the field at will.

"We have to do something about that crystal," Keiko said. I nodded, but what would we do? "The next time he tries to use it, we charge and try to steal it from him," Keiko grinned.

"We steal it?"

"Yeah, I want that crystal."

"Heh, then I guess we'll go for it. I doubt he'll see it coming at least."

The giant monster, slowly marching toward us step by step, came to a stop just a meter away, towering over us with his enormous saw hanging at his side. We both dropped into a lower stance as he reared up, roaring into the night sky. Then, he raised his saw high over his head, as if a slow attack like that would hit us. We both slid sideways as the beast swung down with all his might, raising our swords to counter. However, the explosive force of it hitting the ground hit us in the side and sent us flying again. After I landed, I checked my hp. An attack like that was enough to throw us, but hardly did any damage. As I watched, the small bit taken out of my hp recovered.

Having been knocked from the narrow field, I had to wait for him to change it again before I could charge in for another attack. When he raised his hand, again, I looked up at the crystal, which began to glow as he shouted "Transform!" However, in the middle of the monster's command, the crystal disappeared. The glowing floor reverted back to its original invisible state, and the giant reindeer looked around in confusion.

"Looking for this?" Keiko asked with a smirk, crystal in hand.

"You! That's mine, give it back!"

"Not a chance! Transform!" This time, as Keiko held up the crystal, a large portion of the floor glowed brightly. The boundaries of the little field expanded greatly, though not enough to include the besieged tanks or any of the elves. After that, she swished her hand to open her menu and shoved the crystal inside. Now there was no way for him to get his hands on it without killing her first.

I moved back to Keiko's side, giving her a smile as we both raised our swords to the Boss again. Now that it couldn't change the field at will, we could really let loose. However, when I glanced over at the tanks, it looked like they didn't have much time left before the ground would consume the last of their hp. Quickly, we have to finish this as fast as possible, I thought to my sister.

Taking a deep breath, we hesitated for just a moment, before charging forward. In an open field, with the two of us fighting without restraint, it wouldn't take long. However, we probably didn't have even one minute left. After the first few rounds of attacking and parrying, we had only chopped off about a third of one hp bar. We wouldn't be able to finish fast enough at this rate. Snapping her fingers, Keiko jumped backward, asking for me to cover her.

Fighting the Boss alone, I couldn't pay any attention to whatever she was doing, and fought with everything I had just to keep the mad reindeer from cutting me down. After just a few seconds, a black blur hit the giant beast from the side, a large portion of its health reducing from the sudden attack. So, she'd used the crystal to bring Kirito into the fight. I grinned when I realized.

As it staggered away, we didn't let up. Unleashing all of our Sword Skills as powerfully as we could, the three of us wouldn't even let it recover long enough to guard itself again. As its hp dropped into the bottom of the red zone, the crowd roared from all around. As we all jumped forward, my blade cut into its flank, then Keiko's and the giant shattered in an instant, as the third blade cleaved nothing but air. Cheering exploded all around, as well as a few terrified screams. As I turned back, I saw the screams coming from the elves, which quickly turned and fled, moving to the edge of the field before vanishing into shards of light. As all of the lines separating the spaces on the board disappeared, I glanced over at the tanks. Even the strongest among them were just about in the red zone, while the weakest had just a sliver remaining.

"We have to get off this platform quickly, before the leach finishes them off," I warned.

Keiko nodded, she had an idea. "Transform!" she shouted into the night sky. A powerful force ran through my body as a wave of light shot out from around us, all the way to the edges of the huge platform. "I hope this works!" She squealed, closing her eyes as the ground curved, suddenly warping and swirling in from all sides, into a small, perfectly round ball above her. The entire floor disappeared in a matter of seconds, and suddenly I found myself without any ground to stand on.

Falling! Right before we plunged toward the ground, our hands shot up to grab the ball of magical power. We didn't want to lose something like that. However, as we fell the long distance into the city, would we survive to use it?

『Inner Area』

"Oh yeah, cities are protected areas, we won't take falling damage," I remembered. Then, "But it'll still hurt like hell!"

_Haha it's done! After four days of writing, it's by far the longest chapter of this story. At 11,918 words, it makes up 7% of the entire story so far._


	79. Chapter 77

**Beater, Sleigh Bells, and a Sack of Presents**** Chapter 77**

For a minute, we fell, out speed quickly picking up. All around, cheering flooded the city streets as the heroes who defeated the boss right in front of their eyes fell from the sky all around them. Turning over in midair, I saw the mirror shatter, particles of light floating down from the sky all around.

I took a deep breath. There was a building directly below us, so we turned to get our legs facing downward. With it's slanted roof, we might be able to slide off somehow. In a few moments, we fell closer. In the last moments remaining, Keiko turned, shouting to be heard over the rushing wind.

"Thank you for letting us get the last attack!" Shock registered on Kirito's face as he began to sputter something.

Then we hit the roof. Since my focus had changed to the people around me, I wasn't prepared when we rebounded off the smooth, rock surface. Tumbling sideways, it felt like I'd snapped my legs on impact. It was no better when all my momentum shifted sideways, sending me crashing against the side of the adjacent building. Another bounce knocked me back into the side of the first before I finally hit the unyielding rock ground.

"Ah- ah- ah-" I let out a slight gasping sound a number of times as nothing but pain registered throughout my entire body. By the time it faded enough to sit up, I saw that the enormous crowd had formed a wide circle around us. Or, it would be more accurate to say they were formed around Kirito. Despite just saving the lives of the entire raid group, they were hurling insults at him from all sides, saying he was a dirty beater and was only there to try and steal the LA. While Kirito held as still as the stone he stood on, they quickly added loose stones and rocks to their barrage of insults.

"Kirito-kun?" I spoke quietly as anxiety welled up inside me. while rocks hailed down around him, the anti-criminal code deflecting them of course, he stood with his face lowered to the ground. Even so, I could see how his shoulders and jaw were completely tensed. After a minute, he started to visibly shake. Then, without a word, he shot up into the air, kicking off the side of a nearby building, vaulted onto the rooftops, and was gone.

I sat there for a few more moments, until I saw his name disappeared from our party list. Then I stood on shaky legs, and walked. The crowd clearing the way for me as Keiko, who had somehow avoided falling like I had, dropped down from the top of the buildings to join me. We waded through the sea of people who still clogged the city, talking excitedly about how we had won. A lot of them were angry about Kirito being there, though I still had no idea what their problem was with him. Seriously, how had he managed to make _everyone_ hate his guts?

Eventually, we reached a building with a «Restaurant» sign and plodded inside. We moved all the way to the back, taking a seat at a booth along the wall all the way in the corner. There, I collapsed on the table, completely drained. After resting like that for an unknown amount of time, I heard someone ask, "Are you going to order anything?" I turned to face the unfamiliar voice, staring at the person man who stood their with a rather neutral expression for a few seconds.

"Uhhh..." still almost unable to think, I slowly let out the confused sound. Then, "Bread?" was the first thing that came to mind.

"That's all, just bread?" the old man asked. I nodded and he walked away with a small huff. In just a few moments, he returned with two hard rolls in his hands and set them on the table in front of us before leaving again.

We picked up our rolls and began mechanically biting into them. They were hard, and tough to chew, but as I slowly gnawed on it, a deep flavor expanded in my mouth. Like a hard rye. As we each finished our entire roll, we sat there for a few moments as our senses finally began to come back.

A slam, then someone shouted, "Hey, there's something else happening now!" The restaurant, which I now noticed was quite crowded, emptied in moments. Shrugging our shoulders together, we stood up and walked out into the street. Once out the door, a loud jingling sound seemed to permeate the air around me. I looked all around, but couldn't tell where it was coming from. The strange sound made me nervous, like another fight might break out.

Pointing upward, Keiko advised, "we should get higher." Without any hesitation, we turned to the closest building, jumping as high as we could. It was strange, because no matter how tired we got, it wouldn't effect our actual abilities. Turning sideways, we kicked off from the building, launching ourselves across the narrow street and reaching out to catch the edge of the roof. Slowly pulling ourselves on top, we sat on the slanted surface and looked around for the source of the sound.

Now, the origin of the bells, as well as a new sound- a loud 'ho ho ho!' was apparent. A sled was flying wide circles around the outside of the city. After a few more rounds, the sled curved, moving straight for the center of town. Seeing the strange vehicle's destination, we ran toward the Town Center, jumping from one rooftop to the next. Just as the sleigh arrived, so did we, at the edge of a building right next to the wide plaza. In the center of the open area, a large Christmas tree sat in place of the fountain which normally occupied that place.

The sleigh didn't come down to land though. It stopped right on top of the Christmas tree. Actually, it stopped atop a large red circle, which I now realized was the place we had started, at the center of the magical field. Only now realizing this, I immediately thought of something else. "We need to get back up there!" Keiko drew out the ball of power we had held on to, as well as the crystal to control it, and shouted, "Transform!"

In my mind's eye, I could see what she was picturing for the magic to form. It seemed to be a series of stair cases which would all lead up to the red circle atop the Christmas Tree. As the magic swirled around, rushing into the distance, it quickly formed exactly the structure she pictured. However, that put the stairs down in the field. We would have to get there before we could begin to climb them. Of course, everyone else was too surprised by their sudden appearance to surge up the strange stairs, so we launched ourselves from the rooftop, straight toward the nearest staircase.

We landed in the middle of the crowd, pretty close to the stairs, and shoved our way the rest of the distance. As everyone else stared in awe, we rushed straight up the stairs without delay. Climbing the staircase as fast as we could, we reached the platform to just as someone began to speak. As we came to a stop, Keiko stashed the crystal in our inventory again. In the sleigh sat a large man with a white beard and a red suit. Santa Claus?

"I'm sorry for the trouble that reindeer caused you all," he said. Oh, I realized, if we hadn't stolen the crystal and taken out the floor to get everyone down, we would all have gathered around on the platform when he arrived. So, there would be a crowd, rather than just two people here. However, a crowd was quickly forming as many people shot up the stairs following us. We pushed close to the sleigh, nearly touching it, to stay at the front of the mob which formed. Paying no mind to how differently this was playing out than it should have, Santa continued speaking.

"He's been angry ever since that one time his games got out of hand and we had to intervene. Recently though, he began acting strange, and shortly after came here. Unfortunately, he took quite a few of the elves with him. Many of them stole presents, and now I don't have enough to deliver for Christmas. If any of you managed to collect some, I'll give you whatever I can as thanks." Then, he spoke much louder, as if he was suddenly speaking into a megaphone. "My offer goes out to everyone. I can only stay for so long, but if you manage to collect any of the gift boxes the elves stole from me, I'll trade you whatever I can for them. Of course, if you collect enough presents, I can get a head start. In that case, I'll give gifts to everyone who helped."

Then, he reached into his big red suit, and pulled a crystal from the inside pocket. It was just like the one Nick had, so we both knew what was coming. "Transform." Santa spoke quietly, but the magical stairs Keiko had created reacted nonetheless. Of course, there weren't supposed to be stairs with people all over them, so a lot of people freaked out when they suddenly fell to the ground below. However, more stairs reformed, spiraling around the platform this time in a fashion which would allow many more people than the ones we had made. Keiko watched closely, examining the stairs he created, nodding.

As more people swarmed up the platform, they quickly figured out what was going on. Santa was trading stuff for gift boxes. The only problem? No one had any gift boxes. Everyone who had left to hunt the elves for the special drop had either died, or gotten into the Boss Battle. All those tanks were off healing up and restocking their potions.

As we stood there in the moments after Santa spoke, it seemed that the beginning of this event signaled the end of the last one, because the 『Result』 window from the boss fight suddenly appeared in front of me, with the new quest window on the left. It informed me that I'd gained a hell of a lot of experience, and a flash of light indicated I'd leveled up. When I glanced up through, there were two level up signs, meaning I was level 14 now. When I looked over at Keiko, I saw another message floating in front of her 『Result』 window. It read 『Congratulations! You got the last attack bonus!』 After a moment, the window changed to show her bonus items, though I couldn't read them from where I was standing. A round of congratulations went out from everyone nearby for leveling up (in other games before SAO, it was a tradition to congratulate anyone who leveled up, apparently).

After standing for a few minutes, with everyone complaining that no one could fight those evil elves, most of the crowd dissipated with dissatisfied moans. This event would definitely be called 'terrible' later on. In fact, it had probably caused a lot more harm than help, since a lot of frontliners died from it.

With only a few stragglers on the platform, and everyone else trudged down the stairs to go on with their days. So much for a happy Christmas.

"But, shouldn't we have some presents?" Keiko asked suddenly, "we did kill some of those elves." Some was an understatement, after that boss battle where we must have killed thirty in the few rounds toward the end. We approached Santa who was still sitting in his big sleigh, and he turned to us as soon as we came near.

"Hello little ones, what can I do for you this Christmas? I'm sorry, but I don't have any presents to give."

"Actually, we have some of the presents you wanted," Keiko answered.

"Oh? You two managed to get them back from those naughty, thieving elves?"

"Well, yeah..." She seemed to be unsure of how to continue.

"What good little ones," Santa replied with a big smile. "I still need five hundred presents before I can go, how many do you have?" he asked. I opened my menu and scrolled through our inventory, many new items which I would have to check through later, before I found the 『Christmas Presents』near the bottom. We had four hundred sixty presents. Even I wasn't sure how that one worked out. Before I could tell this to Santa though, a sack came flying at me from behind the large sleigh. Did someone throw that to us? I stepped back, catching the sack, which I could feel held items.

Holding it, I saw it was a 『Cloth Sack』, useful for holding a number of items outside of your inventory, usually so they could be fit onto a 『Vendor's Carpet』more easily, though they were also good for holding money or items to trade if you didn't want to use the trade window.

I tapped the bag, the window coming up saying it held forty-three『Christmas Presents』I tapped the button to the left to retrieve them from the sack, and it collapsed, since there were no items in it anymore. I opened the inventory menu again and looked back at the presents we had, now counted at five hundred three. I tossed the sack into the window before waving it away.

"We have five hundred three presents," I stated with a smile.

"Really? That's quite a lot for two youngsters like you."

I blinked a few times, before Keiko responded slowly, "It's not a lot, it's _all of them_." Santa just chuckled with a 'ho ho ho,' before opening a window to trade with us. After we put all the Christmas Presents into the trade, a bunch of items appeared on his side. All sorts of stuff, from what looked like trash mats, to weapons, armor, accessories, various useable items, and anything else I could think of really.

"Wow," we muttered together as the list just kept growing. At this rate, we wouldn't be able to hold it all. So, I pulled the sack back out of our inventory, taking everything else and putting it in the sack. The reason it wasn't usually used just to carry things outside of your inventory, to save space, was because the sack would increase in weight based on what was inside. With the entire regular contents of our inventory(besides our clothes), which took about 30% of our inventory space, plus all the extra stuff Keiko just got- another 30%- the sack was so heavy I could hardly carry it.

Finally, the trade window finished scrolling down with all sorts of crazy items, and the trade completed. All that stuff was put into our inventory, which immediately filled to 94%.

"Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas! I've collected enough gifts, so I'll give gifts to everyone who was kind enough to help!" A 『Quest Complete』 message came up for the quest I hadn't actually read, though it probably just required us to help Santa. My eyes quickly scanned down the completion message.

『For helping Santa collect _100%_ of the gifts he needed, you have received:』

『Exp: 50,000』

『Col: 10,000』

『Sandy Claws』

『Sandy Claws』

『Sandy Claws』

『Sandy Claws』

Apparently, we'd only had enough room left for the first two, because after a moment, two pairs of claws appeared in the air around me, falling to the ground. "Ack!" Keiko grabbed them, scooping them up and into the sack in my arms. At the same time as that was happening, another flash of light indicated we'd leveled up again. Another round of congratulations went up all around, though they sounded pretty surprised this time. I even heard a few people say things like 'just how low level were they to begin with anyway?'

By the time we'd finished messing around with all that, the sound of many bells all jangling at the same time caught our attention. "Merry Christmas!" Santa's voice boomed across the city. Just as we began to turn in his direction, the sleigh left the red platform, which vanished in a puff of red particles.

"Not again!" The crowd atop the Christmas tree suddenly had no ground to stand on, and fell from the sky. Unfortunately, the magical stairs disappeared as well, so when Keiko pulled the crystal from our storage, there was nothing she could do.

"Grab the tree," she shouted over the wind. Nodding, I reached out, grabbing onto the large branches of the Christmas tree we were falling along side. Unfortunately, we were already traveling too fast, so the hard branches did nothing but scrape up my hands painfully and send me spinning backward. Spinning end over end, the ground came up under me again.

"Ah hell."

_Author's Note: Anyone catch the reference there?_


	80. Chapter 78

** Some Helpful Insight from a Living Encyclopedia Chapter 78**

_Author's Note: About the reference I made in the last chapter, here's a hint: The Nightmare Before Christmas. :3_

"So..." I looked over at Keiko, "how does being a smith work anyway?"

"How should I know? But I still want to do it!" It was the day after Christmas and we were sitting on a bench in «Serof» on the third floor, talking about our plans heading forward. I was sitting with the giant cloth sack in my lap, because we couldn't hold all our stuff in our inventory anymore. We would have to look through it all eventually to find out what we would keep and sell. However, we still needed to get a «Merchant's Carpet» have a place to sell it all, not to mention so we could spread everything out and sort through it.

"Huuhh..." As another person sat on the bench heavily, we both glanced over. Without our cloaks, we had again been attracting more attention than we wanted, so we were nervous it might be another guy trying to pick us up. However, when we saw the person sitting there, his head lying back against the building with a deep frown as he sighed deeply, we froze for a few moments.

"H,Heathcliff-san?!" we shouted together. His eyes darted in our direction, then he let out a another sigh.

"Long time no see." He raised his hand slightly in greeting.

"What's wrong?" Keiko asked, since it was so obvious.

"Ah, it's nothing," he quickly denied.

Of course, I chimed in with, "Really? Anyone could tell there's something wrong with one look at you."

After another sigh, he spoke, "It's really nothing, it was just that event yesterday, I want to forget it ever happened."

"What, did you lose friends or party members because of it?" Keiko asked.

"Yeah... I guess you could say that. It was my fault, I thought we could handle it, but I the monsters were stronger than I thought. I did what I could, but by then it was already too late."

"I know what you mean, we got split up from our party. We don't know what happened to them after that. We don't even know if they're still alive..." As I thought about that again, I slowly frowned. Despite what we were doing, worry about our former party had been rolling around in the back of my mind.

"Well, I guess I'll take my leave," Heathcliff said suddenly, while rising to his feet.

"Wait, where are you going?" Keiko asked, worried about the man who, while I may not call a friend, certainly was a helpful acquaintance.

"I'm thinking of going to the lower floors and helping out the lower level players. A lot of frontliners died and we're going to need more to take their places. I heard about an up-and-coming group. Seems like people are calling them 'the army'. The army? Why did that name sound familiar?

"I feel like I've heard about them before, do you know anything else about them?" Keiko asked.

"It seems the leader is named Thinker." Thinker, as the name rolled around in my head for a minute, I realized that was the guy we'd met all the way back in the «Starting City». He was the one who we helped out training newbies to use Sword Skills. So, he had managed to gather allies and his group had grown? While he'd been on our friend list before, after Kayaba's debugging, that was gone, so if we wanted to add him again, we would have to head back there. Actually, hadn't he said something about leaving a position open for us?

"We met him once, quite some time ago," Keiko said while I was thinking. "Hmm, I wonder what they might need help with..." After thinking for a few seconds, she asked, "Do you think they might need a smith?"

"Probably, there are very few people playing support classes at the moment, and they're all on the frontlines. Having a dedicated blacksmith would allow lower level players to advance much more quickly."

"Ah, that sounds good. So, do you know how smithing works?" Heathcliff nodded, then sat down on the bench again.

After a few moments, he explained slowly and clearly, "The most important thing for a blacksmith is their hammer, though a furnace and anvil are also required. It is what allows them to both craft and reinforce weapons. The higher class of hammer, the more effective it will be. Of course, they can be reinforced themselves, further increasing their usefulness." He raised a finger, going on, "First, for metal smiths, a furnace and anvil are necessary, both for creating and reinforcing. Metal ingots are put into the furnace along with any extra ingredients for crafting, then removed, placed on the anvil, and hit with the smithing hammer for a number of times based on the quality of metal. Reinforcement is faster, only requiring you heat the weapon in the furnace, again, with any extra ingredients to increase the chance of success, after removing the weapon, it only needs to be hit ten times for the reinforcement to succeed or fail. You only have three minutes before it fails automatically, but that's just to make sure you actually finish. It only takes a few seconds normally."

We both nodded, listening intently as he spoke. His knowledge was amazing. "Metal crafting is the most popular. Metal-working is more popular, because metal generally makes stronger equipment, but there is also a tailoring skill for making clothes and leather armor. While the leather armor offers less protection, it can be useful for high mobility builds such as yours," he explained carefully. While we had heard pieces of this from the first blacksmith we met back in «Urbus», Heathcliff's explanation was much more detailed.

"As for tailoring, the basic tools required are needle, scissors or a knife, and thread. Since tailoring is specifically for clothes and armor, it cannot be used for reinforcement, only crafting. So, the crafting process is more complicated. First, all the base fabric or leather must be sewn to the extra materials. This requires you to run a single piece of thread through all materials for use. After you cut the thread at the end, all the materials will fuse into the cloth or leather, determining what type and quality of equipment, can be produced. After choosing the type of equipment to create from a drop down menu, you have ten minutes to shape the clothing. This entails using the needle to spread the cloth out and the scissors or knife to cut it. During this stage, you can apply dyes to change the color of sections of the clothing, or use extra pieces of cloth to modify the clothing further. After either the ten minutes expire, or you open the item menu and select 『Finish』, the equipment is finished and can no longer be modified. At that time, its stats are assigned, based on material type, quality, skill level, and so on."

As he finished explaining the tailoring skill, I was surprised how much more in depth it was than metal working. Well, now that I thought about it, it made a lot of sense. While weapons were created with a large emphasis on the random strength aspect, clothes were a very finely tuned sort of thing. They could look good, bad, or just plain weird, depending on how they were made. Even back on Earth, there were all sorts of clothing styles. When they could be created from scratch in this world, it made sense that it would require a more complex system.

However, Heathcliff still wasn't finished. "There are a number of auxiliary skills as well, which enable you to fuse ingots or cloth materials, depending on your specialty, to produce more higher grade ones, which can be used to form stronger weapons and armor. Creating dyes for clothing is included in the main tailoring skill, so that isn't a problem."

After stopping for a minute to think, Heathcliff said, "The only other tip I can give you is that some people are attached to their weapons. Weapons can be broken down into ingots, which can be forged again in an attempt to make a stronger weapon. They think it 'carries on the spirit of their sword.' This is just a rumor. However... when a weapon is broken down, based on its reinforcement parameter, the maximum strength of the equipment forged with its ingot will increase. That's not to say it will be stronger than one forged from the ingot of a less reinforced weapon, but the maximum power it may reach will increase." He spoke slowly so we could really understand exactly what he was explaining.

"Ok, I understand now. Thanks a lot, Heathcliff-san." With a few words of farewell, Heathcliff left. By the look on his face, his mood had even improved slightly. "So, we need to get a hammer, furnace, anvil, needle, scissors, and thread."

I sighed. "Well, I guess we can say goodbye to all our savings."

_Author Note: Yeah, I simplified the smithing skills. I mean, I feel that taking eight skill slots and still not having all the necessary skills is a little crazy. *points at ME 2* Also, I completely made up the methods for tailoring since they aren't explained anywhere. I just figured that for everyone to have equipment made so precisely, *points at the many identical KOB uniforms* there's no way it could be a random creation type skill like weapons._


	81. Chapter 79

** Loot Chapter 79**

_Author Note: PieTheGuy: (Since you don't have an account.) Thanks for your review. I'd recommend the original novels as well. :3_

_ Also, the reference I made was to how in The Nightmare Before Christmas, they mistook Santa Claus' name for Sandy Claws. Thus, the weapon the twins got was called Sandy Claws. If you youtube search 'nightmare before christmas sandy claws', the first result is the song about it._

Over the next few days, we managed to get in contact with Argo,(really not that hard given that she was looking for us after our performance during that crazy boss fight) and got her to lend us a «Vendor's Carpet», so we could go through all the loot from the battle. We promised that once we sold some of the rare drops we got, we'd have enough money to buy our own «Vendor's Carpet» and give her back her own. From there, she pressed us for information on where we'd been since the last time she'd seen us. We hastily made vague excuses about not being sure and not remembering a lot of it. When she finally huffed, puffing out her cheeks in an annoyed way, we both mentally relaxed. After she gave us the carpet, which she just happened to have on her person the whole time, we added each other as friends again so we could use messages to communicate again.

After our meeting with Argo, we finally settled down on the carpet, moving to a reletively empty street in «Serof». While we dumped everything out on the carpet to sort through it, hoping to pick out any items which would be useful to us and sell whatever remained, I took note of a party passing by, talking about the dungeon. From the sound of it, they had found the boss and were working on scouting battles at the moment. So, this floor would be cleared soon too. After that disastrous first floor, things were picking up. If this floor was cleared tomorrow or the day after, that would make it ten or eleven days to clear this floor.

After that party passed us by, we started sorting through everything, putting mats in one pile, useful items in another, and items to sell in a third. While the non-useful pile was generally comprised of spears, plate armor, maces, giant hammers and axes, and other such items, the useful items pile was much smaller. In it, we had three swords, a lot of daggers, a few pieces of light metal and leather armor, and some clothing. While the daggers were dropped by those elves, everything else was obviously a rare boss drop, even without us opening their windows to check. Judging by the way all that stuff, as well as all the stuff in the 'sell off' pile were rare boss drops, it seemed that Keiko's 'get all drops' luck worked for bosses as well. My guess was that bosses had a chance of dropping a number of different special items to the one who got the LA bonus. Of course, the probability of getting more than one drop was probably so low it never happened... except for her.

Well, at least we would get the Col we would need to start smithing. We put everything useful into our inventory while leaving the rest on the carpet. When I tapped the carpet, a menu appeared and I selected to store the carpet. All at once, it collapsed inward, engulfing everything piled up on top of it, and rolled up into a cylinder. It was a meter and a half(5ft) long, and thick enough to fill my hand. Luckily, the weight was constant, no matter how many items it held, unlike that sack I'd been carrying until now which probably weighed twice as much as myself.

We walked to the center of town, where we set out the carpet again and began selling off the items. The number of people around our carpet quickly grew when they realized the rarity of everything we were selling. Normally, all items had a general market value, which most everyone knew by heart, to avoid being overcharged. However, with items like these, there were probably none like them. Being dropped by a Boss, they were truly unique. As such, the prices for them could be completely decided by the seller- ourselves in this case.

Since we didn't have much experience making up prices off the top of our heads, we probably sold everything for a drastically cheap price for such rare equipment, but we still made loads of Col. Of course, despite the crazy high prices we sold every single item on our carpet. I'd bet that a few of those people spent everything they had to get one of our items.

It took a long time, since we had to bargain with each and every customer on the price of each item, while the rest of the mob fought to get a better look at the other items spread out on our carpet. It's a good thing any items on the carpet can't be moved by anyone but the owner, because I'm sure a few people would have ran off with an item or two, they were so valuable. A number of them sold for upward of one hundred thousand Col. In the end, we had a lot more money than I'd been expecting, probably because I hadn't quite realized that we were selling _boss_ drops.

After we had sold everything, it took a while to shoo everyone away from our carpet, telling them we were definitely all out, and that we really weren't lying. After that, I glanced around. For five meters in either direction, there were no other carpets set up. Looks like our shop pushed away everyone else trying to sell their wares nearby. As I felt all the other merchants on the street glaring in our direction, I couldn't help but chuckle. Woops, we might not want to do that too often. Finally, we opened up our menu, switched to our inventory and looked at our total Col.

…

…

…

For a minute or two, we sat there, frozen as we stared at the number.

"One million two hundred seventy-five thousand five hundred sixty Col..." we muttered together. After another minute of staring blankly at the incomprehensible number, "Alright!" we suddenly shouted, throwing ourselves into the air.

"Come on, before the other shops close, let's get the stuff we need!" Keiko after we lay on the ground for a few seconds. We quickly packed up and rushed off, checking all over the place until we managed to buy up all the smithing items we would need, another «Vendor's Carpet» too. After calling Argo back and giving her back her's, plus the rental fee, we still had about nine hundred thousand Col left. We were filthy rich again.

Now we just had to look through our remaining items. On another side street, we unrolled our new «Vendor's Carpet». Unlike Argo's green colored spare, this one was red. We spread out the new items and pulled up their stats. Starting off with the three swords, there was a blue, black, and white one. The black one was called «Dark Chopper». It was a rather simple sword, with a slightly longer handle and larger guard. The blade seemed a bit thicker than normal as well.

The blue sword was called «Aqua Splash». To match its name, it had more decoration, with various fish pictures detailed into the handle and guard in gold. It was rather light, and seemed like it wasn't the most sturdy of swords. Although, it's attack rating was higher than the «Dark Cutter» and it had a special effect, which dealt extra damage to fire type mobs.

The white sword was named «Gale Sword». It seemed to strike a balance between the other two in terms of decoration. While whited overall, there was some gray and gold detailing mixed in. It was slightly curved, not as much enough to fit into the «Curved Sword» class, but obviously not straight. More importantly, it only had a sharp edge on one side. Overall, I would call it similar to a katana, but not as long or as curved. The guard also had a curved shape, which seemed to imitate a gust of air, offering more protection toward the back side of the blade. In statistics, it again struck a balance between the other swords. The attack power was almost as strong as the «Aqua Splash», while the durability was a little lacking compared to the «Dark Cutter». To set it apart, it had a special ability which increased the knockback against enemies hit.

"So..." we stared at the three windows hanging in the air between us. Needless to say, if we used these swords, we would lose our special «Stat Boost» passive, since we didn't have a pair of any of the three. "Which one do you want?" Keiko asked.

"Not sure, how about you?" We continued staring at the swords for another minute before I had a thought. I switched all the windows to show their reinforcement abilities. Despite their differing stats and appearances, all three swords had a maximum of twelve reinforcement attempts.

"Well that doesn't help much..." Keiko grumbled.

"How about I take the «Aqua Splash»? It looks pretty fragile, so we can reinforce its durability to make up for it."

"If that's the case, then I'll take the «Gale Sword», the «Dark Cutter» just doesn't seem to have enough attack power. It was kind of funny hearing that, since all the swords in question had at least four times the attack of our current, floor one «Wolf-tooth Swords», despite them being the second strongest weapon available at the time. Of course, they also required a lot more Strength to wield. Good thing we'd just leveled up three times and had fourteen spare points to spend.

Nodding to each other, we each picked up our respective sword, and immediately fell on our faces trying to lift them. "Oh yeah, the STR requirements..." Even though I'd been thinking about it just a moment ago... While mine only required fifteen points, Keiko's was heavier and required eighteen. And the requirement would definitely go up again once we reinforced them. Only putting enough points in to meet the minimum requirement for the time being, we unequipped our familiar swords, replacing them with these strange feeling new ones.

"I see what Heathcliff-san was talking about," Keiko said. Though I already knew what she was thinking, having felt it myself, she went on. "These swords just don't feel right after using our others for so long. I know he said that the spirit of the sword can't really be transferred by breaking the weapon down and re-forging it, but I at least want to try." I nodded. She was right, it just felt weird. It was almost like I'd grown to know my old sword, after everything we'd been through together. Even when all our data was corrupted and Kayaba had to rewrite it, even the recreation of my sword had felt familiar. This new weapon was like a stranger- I didn't really know if I could entrust my life to it.

"Well then, I'm counting on you to upgrade our weapons. Let's get to smithing." I smirked, and Keiko returned the gesture.

_Edit: Oops, I wrote this a while ago and totally forgot to post it. T-T _


	82. Chapter 80

**Wayfinder and Convoy**** Chapter 80**

"Well, here goes nothing..." Keiko slowly raised her hand, then brought it down swiftly, a loud clang ringing out through the street. It was about 7:00 pm, so the frontline city of «Serof» was crowded. Despite having set up on a side street, there were still plenty of people around. As Keiko started hammering the glowing red lump of metal lying on the anvil, quite a few people glanced our way. Some of them looked away in the next moment, but a lot didn't. Looks like we managed to attract more attention...

As Keiko continued hammering, she counted each strike. Apparently, stronger ingots needed to be hammered more before they turned into the completed weapon. We had bought some basic iron ingots to get the hang of it before we started working on our own precious weapons. After fifteen strikes, the metal ingot flashed white. Over a few seconds, the shape of the glowing metal stretched, turning into a round cylinder, then stretching forward a few centimeters before warping outward in a shape that looked like a simple guard, then inward to form a long, thin piece, ending in a tapered point.

Finally, the glow disappeared, leaving a regular looking sword on the anvil in front of us. Keiko tapped the weapon and opened its stats window. As expected, it wasn't even on the same level as our old swords. Generally, they were just used by beginner smiths to get their smithing level high enough to actually be used. In our case, Keiko had filled her two remaining skill slots with «Metal Working» and «Metal Refining», We had chosen to forego «Tailoring» for now because we needed both skills to upgrade our swords. We'd just have to wait until we gained more skill slots to get that.

After we went through a few more ingots each, Keiko let out a long breath. "Well, at least it looks like my luck works for forging, even if I don't know what I'm making." Just as she had said, all of the weapons she forged had significantly higher stats than mine. Although, she hadn't forged the same weapon each time. This probably meant that ingots could become a number of different weapons, which were all on the same level, though with emphasis on different stats. None could be called 'the best' among them, so it actually was random for her, just in a small pool of weapons.

"Now, how about..." she said in a low voice before starting on another. This time, the end weapon was a duplicate of another one she had made, a heavier sword. She repeated the process three more times, producing the same weapon each time. After looking at the weapons for a minute, she again made another three swords, though this time they were all the same light, fast type swords. After she turned away from the forge again, I realized what she was thinking.

"So, it looks like you can decide what sword you want to make, and you luck makes sure you always get that one," I smirked.

"Hehe. I can also decide that I want the best possible sword of whatever class. Like heavy, light, or highest attack power." We spoke quietly to keep anyone from overhearing as we figured out the good news.

After reinforcing all the low level swords to gain skill points for our(well, in this case it really was 'her') metalworking skill, we stashed them in inventory. Sitting down with our backs against the building behind our carpet, we discussed what kind of weapons we should try to make. With our skill level at 100 already, should be able to work with any materials we could get our hands on.

"So, how about like we have now? Attack and durability. Things like accuracy and speed don't apply anymore. So let's just go for the highest damage sword we can make," I advised, "Any durability issues can be ironed out with reinforcements."

"Yeah, makes sense. Now, just to finish up with everything else. For a little while, Keiko continued to reinforce weapons, going through all the daggers we'd picked up off the elves, the new swords we'd just gotten from the boss, even the claw weapons we'd gotten from Santa and the two «Anneal Blades» we'd never bothered to use. As I glanced around, I saw that a couple people nearby were watching. Though they tried to hide their expressions, I could still make out a mixture of surprise and suspicion. Figures, after Keiko had made upward of sixty consecutive successful reinforcement attempts without any extra materials.

"Done..." After she finally finished fully upgrading every weapon in our inventory and sat back against the wooden house. With the furnace placed on once side of the carpet and the anvil in the middle, it left the front open for our nonexistent customers and enough room in the back for us to sit.

"I'm getting hungry, what about you?" I asked. Keiko nodded a few times, and I offered, "I'll go grab some food. We'll need two swords and two daggers, so can you make four piles?" She nodded again and I pushed against the wall behind to get back to my feet. Each pile of weapons would get broken down, all their ingots combined together into the best four ingots we could make, and then forged again. That way, we would get the benefits of new swords, and the comfort of upgrading our old ones.

A short distance down the street, not too far from Keiko, there was a stall set up selling food. I bought two bowls of something that looked like fish, or fish soup maybe? I don't know what they were, but I bought them and walked back over to our carpet. Keiko had gotten a number of weapons separated already, but we took a break to eat in the middle. Of course, we were both very, very surprised when the fishy soup stuff I'd bought tasted like chicken, mixed with curry and beans and some other things I couldn't even place. After struggling to gulp it all down, we sat there cringing for a minute before we could get back to the task at hand.

Once finished, we stood back and looked at each pile. First, there was my old «Wolf-tooth Sword», the «Aqua Splash», one of the «Anneal Blades», and half of the remaining «Wolf-tooth Swords». Similarly, Keiko's sword pile held her old sword, the «Gale Sword», «Anneal Blade», and the other half of the extras. As for daggers, we'd split the elf daggers down the middle and thrown our old «Iron Daggers» and «Sandy Claws» on top. That just left the «Dark Cutter», which we both agreed to keep as a backup.

As Keiko began stoking the fire inside the furnace again, which needed to be monitered regularly to keep it going, two young boys approached our carpet, asking if we were open. After a glance at each other, we shrugged. "Sure, why not. What can we do for you?" I asked.

"How much would it cost to reinforce our weapons?" The one on the right asked. Despite being even younger than us, they appeared to be competent. They had full sets of armor, heavier than ours.

"Sure. Switch with me," Keiko said, moving to the anvil while I continued working with the furnace. The two boys stepped onto our carpet, taking their weapons and holding them for Keiko to inspect.

"We don't have any reinforcement material, how much will it cost for the reinforcement and materials?" the other boy asked, his voice a little deeper.

"Well, we don't actually have any materials..." Keiko said slowly.

"But we heard that there are two really good smiths over this way."

"Well, you probably heard about someone else, because we only started recently," Keiko tried setting them right.

"If you just started, what's with all that?" the higher voiced one asked, pointing to the huge piles of weapons all over the back half of the carpet.

"Ah, well we were just about to break them all down to forge stronger weapons," she explained. After assuring the two that they must be looking for a different smith, Keiko managed to have them leave again. "Well, now that that's done, let's get to work." Well, at least the interruption had only lasted until I was about done stoking the fire. Tapping the furnace and selecting the 『Break Down』 option, we shoveled the weapons into the fire filled box until we had one pile placed inside. We closed the door and a timer appeared in midair, counting down the thirty seconds for all the items to break down. Sharing the anvil, we both sat and stared at the timer, becoming more impatient the closer we got to forging our new swords.

After the timer expired, we opened the furnace and used a pair of tongs to remove the single metallic ingot inside. Of course, it was possible to take it out with our hands since we couldn't take damage in town, but the metal was searing hot, so there's no way we ever would. Especially not without any sort of pain dampening. Packing the second pile in, we repeated the process until every pile had turned into a single shiny ingot. We set them all on the anvil, as it was the only flat surface we had, making sure to set them from left to right so they wouldn't get mixed up. We went down the line, tapping each ingot and pulling up their info to make sure that each set of two were of equal quality. Otherwise, we might not be able to create the same weapons from each.

After that checked out, we looked around. We had four ingots, but could only work with one at a time. Where should we put the rest in the meantime? They were still too hot to set on the carpet, because they would probably damage it. After a minute of searching, we finally realized we could use the top of the furnace, though it was a little above our heads.

Finally ready, Keiko picked up the first ingot, for my sword, with the tongs while I set the furnace to 『Forge』. I stepped aside and she dropped the ingot inside to heat up again. As we watched, it's color changed slowly to a dark red, then grew brighter, until it became the color of a bright cherry. However, Keiko narrowed her eyes as she watched. When it became red, that meant it was hot enough to forge. However, she continued waiting until the color slowly changed to a pure white before removing the ingot. Somehow, I too felt that it was better to wait as she had.

"Maximum attack power. Moderate durability." Keiko whispered the traits she wanted while raising the hammer high. Finally, she brought it down with a loud clang. Sparks flew in all directions as the first blow landed on the glowing metal. I counted 'one'. For the next few minutes, Keiko continued raising the hammer and striking down, sending sparks flying in all directions. I counted along the entire time, even while I picked up the next ingot and placed it in the furnace to begin heating.

When the fiftieth blow fell, the ingot finally let out a flash of light to signify that the forging was complete. Then, the metal stretched, as it had done for all the other swords, outward, forming the round handle, then the guard, and finally the blade itself. For a number of moments, the full blade sat on the anvil, still aglow, before the light finally faded. There was no time to admire it however, because the next ingot was ready to forge. I took it out with the tongs and placed the glowing white metal on the anvil while Keiko moved the sword, setting it to lean against the wall behind our carpet.

As Keiko got to hammering the next ingot, an older guy, probably in his twenties, approached. He was dressed in what I could only describe as 'worker clothes'. They were green shorts which seemed unnecessarily baggy, plain shoes, and a gray tank top. What really gave away that he must be another blacksmith was the smithing hammer he still had hanging in his right hand. "So, what kind of ingot is that?" he asked with a curious look.

I stepped forward to talk, so Keiko could keep concentrating on her work. "It's a refined ingot made from one quest reward sword, eight super rare monster drops, and a boss drop," I explained. Before he could respond, I turned around and grabbed the tongs, placing the next ingot in the furnace. After I stoked the fire a bit more to make sure it wouldn't die down, I turned back to see that he was still staring at me with his wide mouth open. "What?"

"You broke down a boss dropped sword?! Really?"

"Yeah, two actually. Why?"

"Those things are one of a kind," he flailed his arms while explaining, "you'll never find anything like it ever again! What if the weapon you make with the ingot isn't as good?"

I shrugged in response, then said, "Well, the weapons were pretty good, but they felt weird, like they just didn't quite feel right. Besides, we'd have gotten better weapons eventually anyway. This is only the third floor after all."

"Heh, interesting," he said, crossing his legs and plopping down halfway on our carpet. Seems that he wanted to watch. However, when Keiko finished the next sword, it too was swept off the anvil and placed alongside the other. Thankfully, they appeared to be the same type of sword at first glance. Moving immediately on to the first dagger ingot, she again spoke in a low voice, asking for high attack and moderate durabilty. The other smith watched silently as she slowly swung the hammer, thirty times in total before the next dagger took form. She placed this one at the base of my sword before moving right on to the last dagger. When he asked, I explained that these two ingots were each made of a basic dagger, twenty three high level monster drops, and two special event rewards.

Finally, Keiko finished the last dagger. After it took form, she slowly sunk to her knees in exhaustion. I took the anvil and slid it sideways to sit in front of the furnace before taking each of the weapons and laying them in the middle of the red carpet to examine. The unknown blacksmith inched forward to look as well while I opened up all the statistics windows.

As expected of Keiko, both swords and daggers were the same. The swords were called «Veiled Wayfinder», the daggers «Harmonious Convoy». The daggers were curved, with only one sharp side on the blade, their guards made of a few smoothly curved pieces. The off-white handle widened toward the top, where it met the deep blue guard, which swirled across from front to back in a way that looked reminiscent of musical notes. The blade was a shiny silver, with a blue sheen that showed when the light struck it the right way. There were a few pure white detailing lines swirling up from the guard, which also looked similar to musical notes. Their stats weren't too far below the boss dropped swords from before either. Interestingly, they had more reinforcement attempts than the boss drops, at fifteen.

The swords were darker, with their handles a dark gray and completely black blades. The handles were relatively thick and flared outward at the end. Unlike the most other swords, it didn't have a guard. Instead, the handle widened parallel to the blade, with a hole straight through perpendicular. On both sides of the hole, the round handle's sides drew into a squared shape, then curving back in to form a rounded edge over top the hilt of the blade. I ran my hand down the black surface slowly, feeling the smooth steel which was oddly warm under my skin. Looking at the stats window, I saw that both the attack power and durability were far higher than the boss drops, while the speed was so low the sword should hardly be usable. I had to smirk at that. These swords were going to fit us perfectly.

Of course, they also had a STR requirement of 20 points, which would increase a lot after we reinforced them, considering they had twenty reinforcement attempts. "Before we mess with our stats, how should we reinforce these?" Keiko asked. Given the types of weapons, the decision wasn't hard.

"Let's split it ten and ten on the swords and go ten sharpness, five durability on the daggers." Keiko thought for a few moments before nodding.

"That sounds good." The other blacksmith sat, watching silently as we stoked the fire again, then reinforced all the weapons as we had decided. In the end, the swords' STR requirement rose to 25 points, and we ended up having to put everything we had left into our STR just to wield them.

As we finally stood with our new swords equipped and hanging at our hips, the blacksmith who was still sitting and watching spoke. "Just... who are you two?"

Keiko turned to him with a smile. "Us? We're just a couple new blacksmiths."


	83. Cheatsheet 3

—

«»

『』

##########

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

##########

exp 431000

col 900000

##########

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 0

STR 25

AGI 20

HP 2940

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 0

STR 25

AGI 20

HP 2940

##########

One-handed Sword 106

Sp: 119144

Sprint 100

Sp: 101010

Battle Healing 100

Sp: 101000

Dagger 110

Sp: 124952

Metal Working 118

Sp: 142630

Metal Refining 114

Sp: 131150

##########

# E Note

Cloth shirt 2 2 Green

Cloth skirt 2 2 Blue

Boots 2 2 Brown

Veiled Wayfinder 2 2 10S 10D – mainly black

Harmonious Convoy 2 2 10S 5D – mainly white/gray

Leather Vest 2 2

Leather Bracer 2 2

Half-cloak 2 2 Black

Cloth Sack 1 0 Holds things

low lvl swords xx 0

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

blessed twins shard of power I 16

10% full

##########

Level chart

1 4000 0-4000

2 8000 4000-12000

3 12000 12000-24000

4 16000 24000-40000

5 20000 40000-60000

6 24000 60000-84000

7 28000 84000-112000

8 32000 112000-144000

9 36000 144000-180000

10 40000 180000-220000

11 44000 220000-264000

12 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15= 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20 80000 760000-840000

##########

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

##########

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

##########

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut


	84. Chapter 81

**Proposition**** Chapter 81**

For the next few days, we did a hard grind on the second, then third floor once we'd built up enough experience to progress. Despite the amazing stats our new weapons provided, the swords were so heavy that we could hardly use them without the system assist. Our only option was to increase our Strength to compensate. In the meantime, the frontliners cleared the third floor on December 28. It was strange to think that the next floor wouldn't be cleared until 2023. Back on Earth, everyone would be getting ready for New Years. Part of me hoped there would be some sort of New Years celebration here in Aincrad too, but another part didn't want something like Christmas happening again.

After a number of days, we finally leveled up enough to wield our swords without too much difficulty. Now at level 18, we had 34 STR, but still only 20 AGI. Of course, having an Agility based build with more STR than AGI was... well, just like us I guess. But as we continued leveling up, we would have to fix the strange imbalance in our stats. Even now, we had too little hp to get hit by attacks, and too little Agility to dodge them all. At least these swords would definitely last us a while, so we could leave our Strength where it was and concentrate on increasing our AGI to where it should be.

When we finally thought we were strong enough to progress to the fourth floor, we instead went back to the first. It was the day after the floor opened, the twenty-ninth. Now that we'd made sure we were more or less combat capable, we were going to go find Thinker again and see about helping out his group... what had Heathcliff called it? But I couldn't remember. So we took the teleport gate back down to the «Starting City» and started looking around. In order to not stick out so much, we took off our combat gear and armor, leaving us with just our regular clothes, including the half-cloaks Griselda had given us. We'd never had a chance to give them back, and now we didn't even know if she was alive anymore...

Wandering the broad streets, we looked around until we found a couple people sitting on a bench. "Hey, have you heard of a guy named Thinker?"

"Yeah, who hasn't? You shouldn't look for him though, he's crazy, him and his group go out and fight monsters."

Waving my hands down to my outfit, obviously better than the original staring equipment both boys still wore, I said, "We're from the upper floors, so we're crazy too. You know where we can find him?"

After cringing back for a moment, he pointed toward our left and answered, "then try the southeast plaza. But really, it's never too late to stop fighting. If you keep fighting, you'll definitely die."

I laughed a little, waving off his concern. "Don't worry about us, we'll be fine. You can't even imagine what we've been through already," already walking away. "If we were going to die, it would've already happened." I waved backward, "thanks for the help!" We zigzagged through the streets, heading generally southwest. When we were probably close, we scaled a nearby building and used the high vantage point to find the plaza. From as far away as we where we were, our crazy sharp vision let us make out the rather large crowd spread throughout the large stone circle. The early morning sun, which still hung in the sky between here and the floor above, sent off gleaming lights where it struck metal. So, they had swords. Not a normal bunch, for this city anyway. "That has to be them," Keiko noted. I quickly nodded, dropping back down to street level so we could jog the rest of the way to the square.

Once there, we got a better look at the crowd. Maybe thirty or forty people total, only a small number wore weapons and armor. Most of the crowd was still dressed in starting equipment. I couldn't tell what they were doing exactly, so we moved a little closer. Once we were close enough to hear, we hesitated near the back of the crowd. No one had noticed us, since their attention was drawn to the same place as ours now, the young man with curly hair. He looked just the same as I remembered. Thinker.

"So, who still needs a sword?" Hands went up over most of the heads in the crowd. "How about armor?" More hands joined them. As he spoke, two others near him counted the hands, writing something down on pads. Probably keeping track of their supplies. Since everyone had sold their starting items, all except for their clothing, they would need to supply them with weapons. I grinned, so we could be of use here after all.

They went on, asking who could use Sword Skills, who had killed a monster before, and other non-combat related things, like experience forming parties. When they had apparently gone through all their questions, they told everyone to relax for a minute. Figuring that was our queue that they were free to talk, we moved around the right side of the group as it just began to disperse. Of course, now that they weren't all focused on Thinker, we drew their collective attention with our obviously higher level attire. Well, at least I hoped it was that this time.

When we came close to the leader of this group, who looked about twenty, we said, together, "Hey, remember us?"

After thinking for a few moments, he answered, "Rei and Rai?"

"Yeah, haven't seen you in a while," Keiko answered, giving him a thumbs up. "We heard that your group is gaining some strength."

"Yeah, it's going ok, and we're slowly drawing in new recruits. These are this week's new guys," obviously meaning all the guys dressed in starter gear. "So, what did you guys come down here for?"

"Well, I seem to recall you saying that we could come back to help later if we wanted... or... something like that..." I really couldn't remember what he had said exactly. A lot had happened since then.

"What we're trying to ask is, do you need a blacksmith?"

"You two became blacksmiths?" He asked with a surprised look.

"Yup," we said, nodding together.

"Great, we could really use a blacksmith. Come on, let's talk it over." He lead us to a nearby bench, where we went over all the details of the position, like payment, materials, and everything else which would be involved. Sometime during the discussion, we added each other as friends again.

When we came to an agreement, he shook each of our hands, and we started to go, but Keiko remembered all extra low level swords we had created, and passed them off to Thinker before we went on our way.


	85. Chapter 82

**The Army**** Chapter 82**

For a little while, we settled into the routine of working for Thinker's group during the day, me smithing low grade weapons for his new recruits, and Keiko making high quality weapons for the higher levels. Around this time, a lot of people stared calling his group «The Army», though Thinker himself didn't quite care for the name. Though, the name fit perfectly. His group was the perfect picture of a united force working for the population of Aincrad. Our help with the weapons allowed them to increase faster, since they apparently had been having trouble getting enough for the recruits before. In the days that followed, their ranks swelled with the sudden surge of new recruits.

At night, we went into the fields on the frontine and hunted until late at night. It wasn't even close to as much time as the frontliners who were clearing the dungeon had, but our «Exp Share» passive allowed us to keep from falling too far behind them. When we got back to our Inn room, a place on the second floor(for the relatively cheap price), we would pass out instantly. A couple times we didn't even manage to set our alarm and wouldn't wake up until Thinker sent us a message the following morning, asking where we were.

In the meantime, New Year's day passed unmarked, and was not spoken of. Although, it was obviously on everyone's minds. Especially down in the first floor city, where everyone was still much more connected to their lives on Earth, since they still refused to begin a life in this world. Of course, the thought on everyone's mind was the same: we're going to be here for a long time. We'll probably be here this whole year. We too, were thinking the same way, though we tried to ignore the feeling. We had things to do in this world, so it wasn't wasted time. We were still living, just like always.

Working with them may have slowed down our leveling, but it made up in it with Col and skill points for our smithing skills. Despite our amazing ability to get tons of drops, the power of a crowd can't be taken lightly. With The Army's numbers reaching into the hundreds, the amount of materials they brought, giving them to us in exchange for the swords we would forge from them, we began increasing our «Metal Working» and «Metal Refining» skills quickly.

Like that, the days passed, until the frontliners cleared the fourth floor on the 7th of January, then the fifth floor on the 17th. With the opening of the sixth floor, something new happened to interrupt our uneventful days. On the sixth floor we had finally reached after two months, it was possible to create Guilds. Of course, on the day this floor opened, when we met Thinker in the «Black Iron Castle», where the members of the army had generally set up their base.

It wasn't official or anything, since it was a public building, but when the only swordsmen in the town decided to gather in one building, there wasn't anything to be done about it. In the city, the Black Iron Castle was the largest building, with many floors and innumerable rooms. It could take us forever to explore the place entirely, though most of the rooms were empty. Of course, there were a few rooms which were important. First of course, was the «Monument of Life», at the very entrance of the castle. It was a massive slab of stone, which stood across the entire length the the room, engraved with... well, nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eight names now- thanks to our names disappearing from its surface a few weeks ago.

But anyway, on the third floor of the ten floor castle, an office had been set up(mainly because it had a large pair of double doors marking the entrance to set it apart from an ordinary room). This was Thinker's office. When we arrived, knocking on the wooden door twice, he immediately called "Come in!" (It was only possible to hear him through the door because we knocked first.)

I pushed the left door open, advancing into the room beside my sister. "You called us?" we asked. Just a little earlier, a messenger had arrived at our small forge set up on the side of the road in the Sixth floor frontline town «Regg». The floor was a grasslands area, though the mobs were tough, slowly changing from animals to humanoids which could use Sword Skills as we continued rising through the floors. With the new floor open, there were lots of people around and we would randomly get a few requests for weapon strengthening or crafting while we worked on the army's orders for the day. The messenger told us that Thinker wanted to talk to us and to head over to his office.

"Yeah, I wanted to tell you that we're going to head over to the sixth floor to officially create the guild soon. I wanted to ask if you would join." With his question appearing so suddenly, we both stood their for a minute in complete indecision. Then, we looked at each other, our thoughts and feelings passing back and forth freely.

It's probably not a bad idea.

But our levels are falling behind the frontliners. Keiko noted.

We're boosting a lot more people up to give them a shot. Even if we don't fight ourselves, it will be better if we got a lot more people there.

That's true, and all the perks of being with the army are worth the obligation, she agreed. Besides, we can always leave later if we don't like it anymore right?

I'm not sure... "Hey, is it possible to leave a guild after you join it?" I asked. Thinker nodded once. I also noticed the perplexed expression on his face.

I guess it's settled then. We nodded to each other before turning back to face our soon-to-be guild leader. "We'll do it," we answered together.

A smile spread across the young man's face. "Thanks a lot. I'll send the invite later." We nodded together before waving a quick goodbye and heading back to our roadside forge. With all the money we were making, we would eventually be able to buy an actual shop, with a full size forge. Though that probably wouldn't come for quite a while still.

The rest of the day passed as usual, and we were about to pack up when a voice called out. A strangely familiar voice. When I looked around, I eventually found the one calling. The dark red cloak was a dead giveaway. She seemed to be yelling at someone sitting at their stall. When I leaned out to get a look down the road, I saw it was another blacksmith. Waving for Keiko to follow, we ran over to see what the cloaked girl, Asuna was shouting about.

In her hand, she held a very thin sword, a rapier. That reminded me that she used a rapier to fight. From what I heard, it sounded like she was angry at the smith for creating a weaker weapon than the one she had broken down for the ingot. It sounded like an important sword to her, otherwise she probably wouldn't care if a weaker weapon was forged.

Approaching the agitated girl, I raised my hand and asked, "Hey, do you remember us?" When her glare snapped in our direction, we both took a quick step back, cringing.

"No, should I?"

"Yeah, didn't expect you to, no one else does," I sighed. "We're Rei and Rai."

"Oh, that's right, now that I look at you... The two twins... Well, what do you want?" her anger seemed to flare for a moment again as she ended her question.

"Well, we just saw you having trouble with your new sword. Do you want us to help?"

"We're blacksmiths now," Keiko added, giving a thumbs up.

"You guys became blacksmiths? Wow, didn't expect that." After we managed to pull her away from the frightened looking shopkeeper, we led her over to our carpet, where she explained that she had needed a new sword, but didn't want to give up the one she was using. So, she took the advice of a friend and broke the sword down to reform it into a new one. She found the most highly recommended blacksmith to reforge her sword, but still ended with a weaker weapon than before. As we listened to her story, we nodded seriously.

When she had finished, we both grinned together. How about we remake your sword again? She took a look at our grins and must have realized something from our expressions, because she nodded and held out her sword. "Please."

Keiko took the weapon in her hand, opening the stats window. I peered over her shoulder, seeing that they were quite low compared to the weapons we had forged for ourselves. In fact, even some of the high end equipment we'd made for the army was better. And those were made from basic ores. Switching over, she revealed that the weapon had a maximum reinforcement of ten.

"Ok, let's see..." Keiko said in a low voice. She opened our inventory menu and searched used the filters to exclude all the weapons we had made today. From there, she searched through the much smaller list until she found a few different ores. We'd picked up some while hunting, which we were saving up for when we wanted to make better weapons than normal.

"Quicksilver and chrystalite... looks good to me." The former was speed boosting metal of moderate quality while the latter increased the strength of special weapon abilities, it was pretty rare, so we only had some of them. Of course, if we could make this old friend a good weapon, it would be worth it. After Keiko set the furnace to 『Reinforce』, she began heating the weapon. Asuna sat quietly, her eyes glued to her beloved weapon. After reinforcing the blade ten times, its maximum reinforcement, which would greatly increase the maximum power of the weapon made from its ingot, she handed off the sword to me.

『Break Down』 I tapped the button on the furnace drop-down and slowly pushed the length of the blade into the fire. Following it went the other two metals to increase its strength further. After a short timer, we retrieved the glowing yellow ingot from the furnace with a long pair of metal tongs. Actually, it seemed that the small ingot's actual color was yellow, it wasn't even a glow due to the fire. With all the weapons we had made, this was the first time getting an oddly colored ingot. Because we had added the extra metals to it was my guess.

Changing the furnace setting one more time, we deposited the lump of yellow metal into the furnace once more. As it sat in the fires for ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, sixty seconds, and on, the color would not change. I stoked the fire again, to make sure it was hot enough for the metal to begin heating. However, the color still refused to change. The ingot would not begin to glow.

Looking at each other in confusion, Keiko said, "Maybe it doesn't change because of its color."

Asuna, who looked very worried and anxious now, suddenly spoke, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing nothing at all," Keiko answered nervously while I took the metal and put it on the anvil. Holding my hands around it, I felt no heat. So, I gulped down my fear and tapped it as fast as I could. Blinking twice, I tapped it again. It wasn't hot. I tapped the metal again, opening the information window this time.

『Crystal Flare Ingot』

『Class: D』

『Smithing Requirement: 95』

『Furnace Requirement: Class D』

『Special: Speed up, Ability up』

After reading over the info, I quickly spotted the problem. "Ah... so that's what it is." I turned back to Asuna, saying, "This isn't a problem really. We just need a better furnace. This was is a class F furnace and this metal needs class D or better. We already needed to get a better furnace, so if you'll just wait here, we'll head over to the shop and buy the new one. We handed her the smooth block of metal, which she held on to while sitting on our carpet. We quickly shot over to the NPC merchant that sold crafting equipment. The higher grade furnace cost 100,000 Col, but we had almost a million and a half saved up already. We bought it without hesitation and headed straight back to our stall.

Storing the old furnace in our inventory, we dropped the new one, which was slightly larger, in its place. Repeating the heating process, this time the metal began glowing dull red, then brighter and brighter. Although, instead of becoming a bright white like the other metals we worked on, at its hottest, it again returned to a neon yellow color. Taking that ingot out of the furnace, which I could feel was much hotter when I stood near it, I set it on the anvil again.

This time, Keiko raised her hammer, wishing for a high speed and accuracy type weapon, with a powerful special ability. Her hammer fell that first time with that thought in mind, and then every time after with the same thought. It took nearly as many hits from her hammer to forge Asuna's weapon as it had taken to complete our own. Forty-five strikes. And finally, the yellow ingot shifted, glowing brighter and brighter in the process, until it stopped, the glow slowly fading.

Strangely, despite the bright yellow the metal had refused to change its shade away from, the weapon before us only had a hint of yellow in its off-white tone. There were also yellow markings running the length of the blade though. Unlike normal swords(though it was similar to our own), her rapier had no hilt, the handle merely wrapping around the blade. It had a swirled texture on the handle, with more yellow lining running along the crevices. Keiko opened the weapon's stats, seeing that the attack and durability were at a moderate level, while the speed and accuracy were through the roof. And it's special abilities certainly made it an interesting weapon. 『Attacks penetrate all armor. Chance to light target on fire on hit. Speed temporarily increases after a successful attack.』

My eyes traveled back to the top of the window. The name certainly fit the weapon. 『Sunbeam』.

Thanking us many times, Asuna then went on her way. With that finished, we packed up for the night. We still had to go give Thinker today's weapons before we went to the sixth floor fields to train. We still had a long night ahead of us.


	86. Chapter 83

**A Strange Rumor**** Chapter 83**

After we handed over the weapons to Thinker, we started on our way back toward the «teleport gate» so we could head to the field. As we turned from a side street toward the main road heading toward the town center, something caught my attention and I skidded to a halt. Keiko stopped a few meters farther, wondering why I'd stopped. As I looked across the street, I saw what had stopped me. Two NPCs were talking idly while sitting at a table and not really eating the food in front of them.

These sorts of NPCs had no specific purpose and usually only filled space to make towns feel more lively. However, they would chat once in a while, and some of the stuff they said could hint at quests and such. Something in their conversation had caught my ear while I was running. Something about information... I stopped and listened to the rest of their conversation as Keiko moved to my side.

"...you sure? Isn't that a little weird?"

"I don't see why not. It's not like there are many dangerous monsters around these days since the all those adventurers chased them away."

"Not exactly, I heard he was talking about a dungeon-"

"Scary~"

"Yeah, I even heard he was covered in bandages or something," the NPC said with a shiver. "I'm going to hold off shopping in the eastern district tomorrow, hopefully he'll be gone after that."

With their conversation apparently over, they began eating the food before them. We moved on, while I thought aloud.

"Sounds like an NPC just started talking about a special dungeon. Want to check it out?" Of course, both of us were already interested, so without an answer, we set off to the East district of the city. From their simple speech, it was amazing that they could drop so many hints all at once. A bandage covered man in the east district, talking about a special dungeon, huh? I grinned as we flew around the middle section of the circular town, arriving in the East in a matter of moments. Despite the slower progress than the rest of our skills, «Sprint» was getting higher and higher as well.

We searched around the area for a few minutes before we found the man we were looking for. As described, he was covered in bandages. Standing in an dark alley between two buildings, he certainly didn't strike me as the most trustworthy source of information. Oh well, it didn't really matter whether it was trustworthy or not, since we were just doing this on a whim.

As soon as we stepped into the alley, he waved toward us, speaking after we took a few steps closer. "Hey, you're a bit young, but you're adventurers, right?" We nodded together. "It doesn't matter, anyone will do. I need some help. My teacher was captured by monsters and they dragged him into their dungeon." We nodded again as he continued. "I tried to get in, but I'm not a swordsmen, I didn't stand a chance." —Well that explained the scary bandages. "It's in the south-western forests, I'd be forever grateful if you could go and save him." Since there was no quest mark appearing above his head as he spoke, that meant it was just a request, or a suggestion basically. There was no system recognized rewards or anything, so it wouldn't matter if we just turned around and walked away without answering. However, it felt rude to do that, even to an NPC.

"Sure, we'll help." We said together. After saying thanks many times, the NPC finally stood again, our conversation apparently over. We both turned and headed South. Instead of grinding in the field, we'd try to clear this special dungeon tonight. While the experience gain from a first floor dungeon probably wasn't as good as our normal grind, there were usually a lot of special items you could only find the first time through a dungeon. So, we shot out the city gates, heading South-west. We arrived in «Horunka» shortly, moving right through, into the forest beyond.

Keiko took the lead so we would be able to find the dungeon in the vast forest, and we continued running, stopping only briefly so she could close her eyes and spin around, changing directions at random as we worked our way quickly through the forest. All of a sudden, we emerged in a clearing, a now very familiar clearing. It was the clearing with the pond that had caused us all sorts of trouble earlier on.

Except... there was no pond... In the center of the little clear space in the woods, instead of the pond which had always been here before, there was a big hole in the ground. As we slowly approached the hole, looking down inside cautiously, we both saw something even more surprising. A short distance down, there were stairs. "So, the pond became a dungeon entrance?" I said slowly. That was just too weird.

Keiko knelt down next to the hole, reaching her hand down inside, as if she would suddenly feel the water which was once there. "Nothing. It really seems like it's gone." I sighed.

"Well, if that's how it is, let's go." Together, we jumped, down into the shallow hole. We would be able to climb back out when we came back, which was good. Proceeding down the stairs, we took deep breaths. This was only a first floor dungeon, but we'd still want to be careful.

Some number of meters down, there stood a large stone door. There was a single lever on the ground, which we flipped, opening the door. No puzzle for this one. With the dark dungeon corridor extending on before us, we drew our swords, the proceeded inside.

_Author's Note: I figured out what's going to happen next. Should be interesting. :3_


	87. Chapter 84

**Snakes, an Old Man, and a...?**** Chapter 84**

The inside of the dungeon was just like the Floor Dungeon on this floor, straight stone walls and floor with a kind of bluish gray color. Torches adorned the walls at regular intervals, providing about enough light. As soon as we stepped into the dark space, it was apparent that this wasn't a trapped dungeon, because all hell didn't break loose. We continued farther, eventually coming upon monsters. They were half snake, half human. Those were mythical creatures called lamias. Even if I couldn't remember that well myself, the name 『Dark Lamia』 gave it away pretty well. There were a number of them, with various types of equipment, but being in such a low level dungeon, they weren't particularly strong, and we cut them down with little resistance.

We kept at it, looking at the 『Results』 window after each fight to check the exp they gave. It wasn't much, compared to our level requirement, but not bad considering they were on the first floor. In about a half hour, after moving down two flights of stairs and to completely map the three small floors of the dungeon, we finally found the boss door. Unfortunately, we hadn't found any sort of treasure or anything in the dungeon. Hopefully, we'd get whatever the reward was at the end.

We took a deep breath together and opened the large doors, walking into the large Boss Room with our weapons in hand. "Let's get this over with," I said in a low voice, "we have to get some sleep." On the far side of the room, there was a big crack in the wall. As I stared into the darkness underneath, a flash of red appeared. The two spots of light slowly grew, revealing themselves to be eyes. A large form emerged from the fissure, the dull lighting of the room showing its form to be a giant snake. Strange, usually Bosses were humanoid. Humanoids could use Sword Skills, which greatly increased their difficulty. That left two possibilities. Either: it made up for that difficulty in another way, or it wasn't meant to be a strong boss in the first place.

As we raised our swords, I figured we were about to find out. Pressing my foot against the ground hard for a moment, I gathered strength in my foot, and then shot off swinging my sword up over my head. A bright glow gathered around the blade until I slashed diagonally downward, suddenly reversing direction right before my hand passed my hips, slashing horizontally back to my right, and finally tipping my sword's point downward, before slashing diagonally upward. It was currently my highest consecutive slashing attack, «Sharpnail». While the power of each attack wasn't that much, it was very easy to execute without the System Assist because of the movements required, allowing me to attack with all of my abnormally high Strength.

As our attacks ended, the enormous snake reeled back as if flinching, but suddenly shot forward without warning. I threw myself left, evading the deadly sharp fangs, but the snake was so wide that the side of its head rammed into me, sending me toppling backward. Despite the heavy blow, the difference in our levels was obvious. Even as I rolled backward, I grit my teeth and kicked up to my feet to stop the slide faster. My hp bar depleted only twenty percent or so, already increasing again due to my high level «Battle Healing» skill.

Looking toward the boss, I first noticed how Keiko had avoided the attack and was still attacking the boss fiercely. Only then did the giant boss snake's cursor registered in my mind. My eyes ran over the name, 『The Venom Spitter』and the four bars of hp floating to its right. As the meaning of its name became clear in my mind, I blinked, realizing that it was about to live up to the name.

In the next moment, it reared back, the very front of its long body ascending high above our heads. Then, its jaw opened up, spewing a bright, neon blue substance through the air toward Keiko. She jumped nimbly backward, changing direction and jumping left as the next attack came, then backward again. As the boss repeatedly fired off the venom like a machine gun, Keiko was forced to continuously dodge out of the way. Seeing this opening, I took a few steps forward before I raised my new, black sword up to chest height, pointed straight forward.

Like that, I kicked off hard, the blade beginning to glow bright. I jumped into the air, soaring the numerous meters between us, and brought the slash down, angling it slightly to cut deeper into the snake's... neck, I guess. Even though they don't really have necks. As soon as I landed on the other side, I ducked low to the ground, practically feeling the way the air vibrated as the snake used the whole front portion of its body to swipe horizontally above my crouched form.

As soon as the attack passed, I heard the powerful sound effect of another sword skill being unleashed. As I rose again, I brought the dagger in my left hand up, straight at shoulder height. I took one strong step toward the snake's vulnerable body and thrust forward with the strongest «Linear» I could. Between our few attacks, We had reduced the Boss' total health by nearly half.

The level difference really was too much. While the giant snake fought desperately, it could hardly harm us, and the short battle ended with us both still at full health. I made sure to allow Keiko the Last Attack, just in case something like that would differentiate between us. She received another stack of Unique items, though they were all low level and couldn't compare to our current gear.

"Oh well, we'll just sell them to the army later," Keiko shrugged.

"At least there were a couple rare ores in there too," I noted. With the boss gone, we looked around the room. Despite the bandaged NPC's claim that his teacher had been captured, there definitely wasn't anyone here.

"Wait, do you hear that?"

"Yeah, what is it?" I blinked as I heard the sound she was talking about. It was a kind of low, whining sound, though it would stop briefly once in a while. Following the sound, we both looked directly over at the large crack in the stone wall, where the snake had come from. Nodding together, we slowly walked forward, huddling up against the wall on either side and peeking inside.

"I can't see anything."

"Same." We continued staring into the perfectly black space for a little longer, before giving up and drawing our daggers. Depending on how tight the space was, swords might be too long to use inside. We slowly walked into the dark, moving over uneven ground for a minute or two before light began to break through the emptiness. We rounded a corner, only to find a small room. It was just like the normal dungeon with its blueish stone and feeble lighting. More notable though, was that it was piled high with... stuff. There was a ton of furniture, books, and all sorts of non-valuable things.

As we moved into the room, the low whining sound suddenly stopped, becoming a much louder, much more human sound. It was obviously the sound of someone trying to speak through something. The accompanying banging sounds brought us running around a huge pile of junk, to find a large metal cage sitting on the bare stone floor. Inside this cage sat an old man, a large strip of cloth tied over his mouth.

We both ran to the cage, kneeling down as the man tried to futilely speak. To help, I reached through the bars and carefully used my dagger to cut the binding over his mouth. "Thank you so much, those evil snake people captured me. Can you get me out of here? The key is somewhere in this room.

"In here? We have to search through all this stuff?" I pouted. Keiko sighed as well. "Whatever, how about..." I thought aloud while drawing my sword. I swung it around, down, charged for a few moments, just as Keiko started to speak, and my hand flashed upward, drawing a strong line in the air from «Flash Draw».

As my attack struck the metal cage, numerous 『Immortal Object』 messages appearing all along the length of my attack. However, that didn't stop the metal bars from being cut straight through. "So I guess that's what he meant by 'immortal objects won't function as expected'..." I noticed.

"Jeez, Onii-chan, stop breaking stuff!" Keiko shouted, thumping me on the head.

"Owowow..." I muttered as she walked past.

"Here, the key was lying in the first place I checked." I stuck the key into the lock, opening the cage door in a moment. She opened the door, allowing the old man to step out, even as the action knocked the entire top half of the cage off the other side. The old man bowed repeatedly thanking us over and over, while we just stood and tried waving it off.

"As thanks, take this. Use it and you will be sure to reach greatness... Well, unless it runs out first... but never mind that." Holding out his hand, he forcefully placed a small object in my hand before turning and walking out of the room much faster than I would imagine an old man capable of. We both stood there for a minute, looking at the small glowing sphere held in my open hand.

"So... what is it?"


	88. Chapter 85

**Wayfinding**** Chapter 85**

_Author Note: Just got Hawken, I'll write this chapter tomorrow._

_ Ok it's tomorrow. XD_

After a few seconds of looking at the small orb with a gentle white glow, I reached down and tapped it with my left index finger. From the popup menu, I opened the item's information window.

『Navigation Crystal』

『Provides a guiding line toward a set destination.』

『Charge Remaining: 73/1000』

Ok, I thought. So that's what he meant by 'reach greatness.' However, when I looked at the third line, the other part made sense. I figured that when it ran out of 'charge', it wouldn't be able to lead us to the destination anymore. Given that it had less than ten percent of its charge remaining, it was very unlikely that we would reach the destination before it ran out. So, what to do...

With no sign of the old man, we quickly backtracked through the now-deserted dungeon, back to the entrance. We left the lever flipped, in case anyone else found this place. That way, they would already know it had been explored once. We climbed the long staircase upward, hopping up and pulling ourselves from the shallow hole easily.

While we walked back through the forest, wondering what to do with the crystal, not to mention where it would take us, Keiko opened her menu to check the time. I glanced over and saw that it was about 9:00 pm. We still had some time before we had to go back. "So, you want to give it a go?" I grinned.

"Absolutely." We picked up our pace, passing through «Horunka» and out into the plains before we stopped. "Well, let's see how this works." I nodded, holding the small spherical orb up at arms length. I wasn't sure how to activate it, since there hadn't been a 『Use』 option when I tapped it earlier. I'm pretty sure I'd heard someone talk about crystals that you would squeeze to use, so I tightened my grip.

As soon as I squeezed on it, the small crystal lit up, releasing a powerful glow. The light shot away at an incredible speed, out over the plains, heading forward and slightly left of the way we were facing. I released the tight grip on the orb and the glow disappeared immediately, the line of light vanishing before us. I tapped the crystal again to check how much of the charge that second or two of use had drained. 『Charge Remaining: 71』. "Ok then, looks like about one charge per second. Meaning we have slightly more than a minute to find this place..." I let out a dejected sigh. No matter how fast we ran, that was totally impossible.

"How about we just activate it for a moment, then run after the guide line as it flies away?" Keiko suggested.

"That's probably the only chance we'll have," I shrugged. "Let's go for it." We both sunk low, and I counted down, squeezing the small crystal for just an instant as I shouted "Go!" The bright guideline appeared in front of us, as we kicked off hard to run as fast as we possibly could after it. However, we were constrained by our maximum movement speed. This line of light was moving far beyond any speed we could possibly run. In less than three seconds, it had flown so far away it was out of sight. We slowly came to a stop, again wondering how we might be able to do this.

"Oh, then how about we follow the direction the light went for a while, and check later to see if we're still on track?" I asked as it came to mind.

After thinking for a few moments, Keiko nodded, replying, "Yeah, let's try that." Again, I squeezed the magical crystal for just a short instant and we set off running directly after the trailing line. Even after it vanished entirely from our sight, we continued on in the direction it had been going, running for a couple minutes until we reached the «Starting City». There, we checked again, finding that the «Navigation Crystal』 was still leading us into the city. We continued straight on, directly down the center of the main avenue, stopping again when we reached the main plaza.

One more time, and the guiding light shot directly into the «Teleport Gate» standing tall next to the fountain. "So, it's on a different floor?" I asked aloud. Since that was the only thing it could mean, we both stepped into the gate and called out to teleport to the second floor. Here, we moved a short distance away and tried again, though we had the same result of the light leading into the similar second floor gate.

On the third floor, we tried yet again, this time finding that the light disappeared off into the thick forest. As we had come to learn recently(since we'd been hunting on this floor), this area was called called the «Misty Forest» for the heavy mist hanging over the thick forest, which prevented the floor map from being of any help. Generally, it was suicidal to leave the paths cutting through the jungle, because powerful monsters lurked inside and would ambush anyone who carelessly got lost. If you couldn't find your way out, you would keep getting attacked and worn down until you finally fell to the monsters inside.

Basically, running straight into the massive forest was a _really_ bad idea. So we did it anyway.

As we cut through the overgrown tree growth on all sides, we skipped over roots and brush, and thorns of all sorts, drawing our swords to fend off whatever monsters jumped out to attack us, though we didn't both to fight and just deflected their attacks away while running, eventually leaving them too far away to chase us anymore. Periodically, I would activate the crystal and we would turn drastically toward the new direction it pointed us.

Then, when I tried to activate the crystal again, no light was emitted. "Crap." I pulled up the information window, and as expected, it was out of charges. "What now?" I asked.

"Hmm, I'm not sure..." Keiko put her hand on her chin, thinking deeply. Of course, we probably should have realized that standing still while deep in thought was not a good idea in a dark forest with monsters waiting in ambush every other meter. Caught from behind, I felt a blunt smash against the flat of my back, losing my balance and tumbling forward. As I staggered, my hands flailing to steady myself, I accidentally let go of the crystal, sending it flying past Keiko. As soon as she realized what was happening, she jumped to catch it. Crystals weren't the most durable items, and it might very well break if it fell on the ground like that.

Reaching out with her left hand, since she still held her sword in her right, she barely managed to catch the crystal, only to have a second monster catch her from behind as well, a strong attack to her side sending her tumbling off to my right, where she staggered into a the trunk of a huge tree.

As I was pushing myself back to my feet, Keiko spun back, slashing clear through the monster which had attacked her. I turned, managing to parry another blow about to come from the one behind me, proceeding to cut it down with a few quick attacks afterward. Though they had hit us squarely with strong attacks, we were still in a rather low level area compared to us, so the damage hadn't been anything dangerous.

With those monsters gone, I asked Keiko, "So, what happened to the crystal?" I hope she had managed to save it. Even if we couldn't use it now, there had to be some way to charge it up again, right?

"Well, when I ran into that tree..." she thought aloud, imitating the motion her hands had made at the time, then looking down. "What-"

"The-"

"Hell?!" we both finished together. In her hand, her sword looked completely different than usual. Well, not the shape really, but instead of a dark gray and black color, it was super bright, almost entirely white. Not to mention the lines of light running up the entire length of the blade.

"It looks like I accidentally hit the crystal against my sword... here..." as she rubbed her hand over the spot, right near the hilt of the blade, her eyes scrunched up momentarily. She fiddled with something, and suddenly the sword in her hand returned to normal, the bright white of its surface fading back to the dull, dark gray like usual. She held up the glowing white crystal for me to see, and we both blinked at each other a few times.

"Looks like there's more to these swords than we thought," I commented. Keiko reached down again, apparently placing the crystal in the hole at the very top of the handle, in the place where a guard should be. Again, the sword lit up a bright silvery white. She tapped the weapon and brought up its info window. Reading from the other side, everything seemed to be the same, except for two things. First, the name of the sword had changed. Instead of «Veiled Wayfinder» being listed at the top, it only said «Wayfinder». While this was interesting on its own, there was a much more important change. There was now a special effect listed. It read 『Special effects activate when attacking based on type of crystal attached.』

"So, these swords work with crystals..." Keiko said slowly, thinking aloud. Of course, the first thing that came to both of our minds was the same. Can it keep making the navigation crystal work? Thinking that, Keiko raised her sword up and swung straight down. As we watched, the light effect from her sword skill spun in midair after her attack passed, swirling in the opposite direction as it sped up, quickly flying away into the forest.

"Looks like that's a yes," I answered our unspoken question. We both grinned and took off. "Do you realize...?" I shouted to be heard over our crashing steps and the howling roars of all sorts of monsters that tried attacking us, "that Veiled means 'hidden', and Wayfinder means 'one who finds the way'? Basically, your luck is way too awesome," I explained while we ran. Since the 'Veiled' part obviously referred to the special ability of being able to interact with crystals being hidden, the 'Wayfinder' part was definitely referring to how it could use a navigation crystal to find a path.

Keiko let out a burst of laughter as more monsters leaped from the surroundings and we cut them down with powerful attacks. Attacking released another light effect which we turned to follow. A few minutes of slashing our way through the hazardous jungle, we emerged in a clearing. Skidding to a halt, we both looked forward, then at each other, than back at the strange sight before us.

In the middle of this massive forest, with just a small area cleared around it, stood an old, wooden, dilapidated, and abandoned, house.


	89. Chapter 86

**Haunted House**** Chapter 86**

We approached the old house slowly, walking up to the front door. For some reason, I felt compelled to knock. However, as soon as I struck the door, it swung slowly inward with a loud, groaning creak. After glancing at each other again, we took cautious steps inside. "Sorry for intruding..." we both said together as we moved through the entrance. We sheathed our swords while we looked all around. However, it was nearly impossible to see anything in the dark house. Being nighttime, there wasn't even any indirect light coming from outside. After a few moments, Keiko opened our inventory and quickly pulled out one of the magic shards from inside.

"Good idea," I noted as she called for it to make light. In a few moments, the shard lit up, providing enough light to get a look at our surroundings.

To the left, there was what appeared to be the living room, with a few chairs, a couch, and a low table. However, the couch was full of holes and all the chairs were lying on their sides, the legs broken and scattered through the room. There was a stone fireplace along the same wall as the door we had just moved through, though I couldn't see inside it from here. On the other side was a kitchen. All the cabinets were missing their doors and the counter tops were all broken up, some with entire chunks taken out.

Straight ahead, separating the two rooms was a staircase heading upward, though many of the steps were broken or missing. The floor we stood on wasn't in much better shape, many of the floor boards were sticking up and there were actually a few holes in the floor, through which I couldn't see anything but darkness. We each took a single step forward, the floor releasing awful creaking sounds beneath us. It must have been because this place screamed 'haunted house' that it felt like we should stay as quiet as possible in here. Mentally agreeing, we went right, slowly making our way through the ravaged kitchen.

The old man had said the navigation crystal would lead us to something great, so there must be something in this house, like a treasure chest or something, with a lot of treasure. Past the kitchen, toward the back of the house, we entered the dining room. The whole table was on its side, three of the legs splintered and broken off. More chairs covered the floor and we stepped slowly around them, not wanting to disturb this place in case something happened. Everything lying on the floor could be rigged with traps for all we knew. The only other door out of this room was on the left wall, so we walked through there, into one more room.

This room was so destroyed I honestly don't even know what it might have been before. Shreds of wood and paper lay over everything. There were even numerous pieces of the walls blown out, allowing me to look right out into the woods beyond. The floor in this room was so broken underneath the rubble that we couldn't even walk through, so we backtracked through the others to get back to the entrance before walking into the living room. I glanced over the broken chairs and ripped up cough, then into the unlit fireplace. So far I hadn't seen any indication of there being anything here at all. When we walked to the door heading toward the back of the house, we saw that it lead to the same impassible room as before.

That meant we'd been through the whole first floor of the house. No treasure here. We walked back to the entrance, turning left and carefully climbing the stairs. Each step let out such a groan, it felt like the entire stair case would collapse any second. Somehow, we managed to make it to the top in one piece, and stood atop the stairs, examining our surroundings again. On either side of the stairs, a path wrapped around. There were five doors total, one directly to each side in front of us, another two on each side behind, and the last straight backward, on the wall which would face toward the front of the house.

We checked the right hand room, a bedroom, then the left, another bedroom. From there, we went to the doors on the front side of the house. One more bedroom and a bathroom. That just left the single door at the center of the wall. It was the last room, so if there was anything here, this would be the place.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open, letting it swing slowly until it stopped with another nerve-wrenching squeal. Inside this room, there was more paper strewn all over the floor, various pieces of furniture toppled on all sides. However, there was a single desk sitting amidst the wreckage. It was the only piece of furniture I'd seen still standing on all four legs in this whole house. Even more cautious than before, we approached the desk, coming to stand before it together.

We both leaned sideways, looking all around the desk. There didn't seem to be anything around it. Nothing under it either. So, what about the treasure? Standing there in confusion, I finally realized something which should have been obvious. On top of the desk, there was nothing but a single thin notebook. I reached out before I could stop myself, about to pick up the book before I froze, my eyes going wide. There was a trap set here. I don't know how, but I could tell that it was definitely there. So, grab the book and deal with the trap or just leave it?

This book was the only thing in this destroyed house. There must be something amazing inside. But, what kind of trap would be triggered when I picked it up? I glanced at Keiko, who wasn't sure what to do either. We were used to dealing with tons of traps in dungeons, but this place wasn't like any sort of normal dungeon. It felt like whatever would happen would be seriously deadly. "Ah hell! Whatever it is, come get us!" I shouted, grabbing hold of the book and sweeping it off the desk with a tight grip.

A chill ran up my spine. All at once I realized what kind of trap it was. With reckless abandon, I forcibly threw both of us backward as hard as I could. As darkness appeared in front of me, I recognized the danger here. This was the exact same type of trap that was set down in that off-limits area we had ran through before we left Aincrad. The one that crushed everything. However, this trap was much, much stronger than the others. I could already feel the incredible pull of gravity, like a black hole, even from a number of meters away.

As my back struck the floor, our weight was all the destroyed floor boards needed to finally break and we fell straight through the floor. I grabbed Keiko with my free hand, holding tight on her arm as I curled forward, bringing my feet down to land on the stairs. Somehow, I was leaning farther forward than I thought, and kicked against the side of the stair instead of the top. Kicking forward by accident, we flew down the stairs, nearly crashing to the floor in the doorway, until the growing black hole above us began to catch us and pull us upward.

Luckily, we were just at the edge of its range. So, instead of pulling us in, the reversed gravity whipped us, like a planet going around the sun, up into the air as we traveled past it. After the uncontrolled pull, we flipped through the air for a few seconds before crashing to the ground in a heap. We quickly fought to untangle ourselves, staggering back to our feet in time to see the black hole continue to expand farther and farther. Even as we watched it, we quickly backed up so we wouldn't be pulled in ourselves. Another few seconds, and it finally crushed inward, disappearing into nothingness. Along with the entire house we had just been in. And all without a single sound.

After that sudden danger had passed, we both slid to the ground. "Haha..."

"Hahahaha!" we both let out relieved laughter now that we were safe again.


	90. Chapter 87

**The Book**** Chapter 87**

After wandering through the woods for some time to get back to town, we headed straight for the «Teleport Gate». It was almost midnight and we had to get back to our Inn for the night. The entire time, I kept glancing at the book in my hands. What could be inside? I wondered constantly. When we finally got back to the Inn, we ate our tasteless dinner quickly before retiring to our room upstairs. As soon as we entered, the small space, I threw myself onto the bed. Lying backward with the book above me, I opened to the first page, reading aloud as I slowly wriggled backward into a sitting position. (It wasn't actually very comfortable reading while lying backward that way.)

"Second day of the Month of Sun, year... five thousand for hundred seventy-seven." So, this thing which looked like a diary entry was dated June 2, 5477. I guess Aincrad's years were different than our own, not that anyone had ever mentioned just what year it actually was in here _now_.

"Now that the great castle has been constructed successfully, I'm having trouble remembering the time before. While I would like to blame it on age, I fear there may be dark magic afoot. I think I'll head to ask the elves, who have much better memory than us humans. While they have villages on the eighth floor, that is much too far for me to go in my condition. Luckily, I heard rumors that there are a few wandering this floor. Surely, if I ask them about the time before, they will be able to remind this old brain of mine. Of course, if they cannot, it will indicate a much more dangerous problem. Just in case, I'll lay a magical trap on this book in case they search the house. Although, the trap's presence itself will probably keep anyone who can sense magic from triggering it. I can only hope that they are stupid enough to try anyway."

As I read the last lines, an awkward smile spread across my face. "So, 'stupid enough to try anyway'... I guess that's us..."

"Hehe, I see your point..." Keiko sighed alongside me. "Well, it does have some good information in there. There are the references to this 'time before' and elves on this floor. Sounds like another non-system quest. And those always have the best rewards, right?"

"Yeah, they do, but they're also scary as hell." I still remembered the time we had to flee for our lives from a pack of sub-boss level wolves when we were only level 1 and had no weapons. Not a good memory.

"Well, let's at least look into these elves on the third floor, since the eighth floor won't be open for a while still," she suggested. I nodded. There probably wouldn't be any harm in asking them. We were pretty strong now, so an event like that last time shouldn't happen again.

As we lay down to sleep, one more thing still stuck in my mind. It was the line in the book that went 'anyone who can sense magic.' I had noticed the trap before I'd set it off, which obviously meant I could sense it. Of course, SAO might be designed so that anyone would, but I had to doubt it. With an element like magic purposely left out, why would the people in this world be able to sense it? For us, it was probably because of our oddly numerous run-ins with the mysterious stuff. I guess we were better accustomed to it now. Hopefully it would pay off later in case some other sort of magic was used against us.

"I hope so..." Keiko responded to my thoughts. However, when I looked over at her, she was sound asleep. A small smile spread across my face.

"Good night little sister." I rolled over and quickly drifted off.

_Author Note: Short chapter is short. :(_


	91. Chapter 88

**The Not-So-Friendly Elves**** Chapter 88**

_Author Note: I don't like short chapters, so I'll write a second one. :3_

The next day, we went to Thinker in the morning and told him we were working on a quest, so we'd be away for the day. He just shrugged, saying that if we needed to do something else, who was he to stop us? After we left the «Black Iron Castle», we shot over to the «teleport gate» to go back to the third floor. Standing at the gate out of «Serof», we took a breath together, preparing ourselves to go rampaging through the jungle again until we found the elves.

Running straight into the forest, we ran a ways before any attacks came. During the daytime, ambushes didn't come as often. We cut through the rabbits and lemurs and bears and trees and wolves and anything and everything else that came at us, never slowing down except when Keiko had to spin around to find our next heading. At one point, we heard a metal clang that wasn't made by our own weapons, and slid to a stop, listening. Just a little farther ahead, the sounds of battle rang out. We moved forward until we came to stop behind a tree, both glancing around it into a clearing ahead.

In the clearing were two elves, just like we were searching for... However, they were fighting. Each other. We stared for a few seconds in confusion. Why were the elves fighting? One was a woman with dark purple skin(1) and hair, with armor a lighter purple, trimmed with black. The other was a male, much taller, with fair skin and bright, gold and green armor. They each weilded a sword and shield, the man a straight sword with round shield, and the woman a curved sword with a kite shield. Everything about them appeared to be opposite. Except, weren't they both elves?!

Despite whatever questions I had, they both fought ferociously, though they didn't seem able to land a single blow on each other. "Well, let's see if we can find out what we need to know," Keiko urged us on. I nodded quickly as we both entered the clearing. Large golden question marks appeared over both elves' heads as they spoke similar, yet different lines at the same time.

"What are you humans doing in this forest?" came from the right hand white elf.

"Don't come here and disturb us! Leave us immediately!" the left hand dark elf shouted.

"We came to ask about 'the time before'!" we both shouted back. Both elves stopped for a few moments.

Then, "where did you hear about that?" they both asked in forceful tones.

"In this book," I said, tossing it to the dark elf. She flipped it open immediately and her eyes quickly scanned down the page. Snapping it closed, she tossed it across to the male elf, making a face like 'I don't want to but I have to'. The second elf scanned the book for a few moments before looking back toward us.

"So, what do you want to know?" As he spoke these words, the question marks indicating a quest starting point disappeared from above both of their heads.

"We wanted to know, who wrote that. Have you met that person?"

"No, I do not know who this person is," he responded flatly. When we turned our gazes to the other, she simply shook her head.

"Then, what do you know about this 'time before'? What is it exactly?"

"It refers to the time before the floating castle Aincrad." This time it was the female elf who spoke.

"The time before... Aincrad?" I muttered to myself, confused by what they meant. Before Aincrad, there shouldn't have been anything, right? This floating castle was built entirely by that man, Kayaba Akihiko. Well, his company at least. Until he built it, filling it with all the NPCs in here, these two did not exist. So how could they refer to the time before that? It was like us theorizing about 'what happened before God existed' or some such. There just wasn't any way of knowing, it was all hypothetical. However—

"Before Aincrad there was... umm..." The white elf began speaking, but suddenly came to a halt. "There was... I remember... uh, I remember... forests..." he stumbled over his words, his hand moving to his head. "For some reason, I can't really remember. It's all kind of vague..."

"Leave it to a wood elf to forget something so important," the lady huffed, crossing her arms.

"Oh really, then what do you remember?"

"That's easy. I remember... umm... uh..." she floundered for a few moments before she managed just, "forests..." At that point, the male elf began laughing in a condescending way.

"Hahaha, you... Haha... You don't remember... You don't remember any more than I do!" it took him a few tries to get through the whole statement.

"No, no!" the girl squeezed her eyes shut as a deep crimson blush spread across her already dark skin. "I remember... a... a hermit! Hah!" She puffed out her chest with pride at having bested him while the man glared angrily.

Before they could start fighting again, we both chimed in. "So, do you know where this hermit is?"

"Where... that is..." she bit her lip as she again began trying to remember.

Meanwhile, the gold armored elf was also concentrating. "That hermit... I think I know who you are talking about... He lives on the second floor now." With the last of the information, he gave a dazzling smile that said, 'haha, I one-upped you'.

The two elves continued bickering for a few more minutes, though neither managed to remember anything else. Slowly backing away, we thanked them for their help, about to leave the clearing when I suddenly gasped and turned back. "Wait, can we have that book back?" I called.

"I have no need of it," the male elf said while he tossed it in a high arc, straight to me. With the notebook in hand, we made a hasty retreat from the field before they both tried to kill us instead of each other, or something else crazy like that.

"So, a hermit on the second floor?" Keiko said. "Talk about running all over to find out what we need to know."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. If only we could just ask Argo-san." We both laughed at that old joke, from back when we worked for Argo regularly. Since we'd started working for The Army, we hadn't really picked up much info, so Argo hadn't spoken to us much.

"Whatever, let's get going." As we looked forward, numerous red markers appeared in front of us. All sorts of angry monsters were about to attack.

"I'm going to be really glad when we don't have to hack through this jungle anymore..." I muttered, drawing my sword.

(1) I chose to make the elf purple skinned, because the only dark elves I've ever heard of are from Warcraft, where they're purple. *shrug*  
Edit: Apparently they're Night elves, not dark elves. (Derp)


	92. Chapter 89

** Middle of Nowhere Chapter 89**

_Author Note: Spent all yesterday shopping. T-T_

Appearing in «Urbus» on the second floor, we looked around. Surprisingly, there were some people here. Even though the frontline had moved on, it looked like all of the late-starters had started making it up to this level. Following Keiko, she led the way out of the town's west gate, silently choosing one of the many paths branching out from the small space around the town. We ran at a full sprint, since the skill really needed us to use it whenever possible to keep up with our others.

Through the winding cliffs, we eventually made a sharp turn onto... well, nothing. It was a straight cliff face. Shrugging to each other, we trusted her luck and attempted to climb the cliff. After some number of minutes, we finally managed to reach the top. Another spin to determine our direction, and we walked, carefully, along the ridge at the top of a few connected mountains, which eventually lowered somewhat, before meeting a cave entrance.

"Really, another cave?" we both sighed. We'd had just about all we could take of caves in this lifetime. Nevertheless, we walked inside the dark area, when suddenly we found no more solid ground beneath our feet. Instead, a strong current of water pulled our feet out from under us, quickly dragging us along a long, curving path downward. I can't be sure how long it took, but we eventually ended up reaching a sudden end to the little river, where we shook ourselves to get our clothes dry. It was still winter, so it was really cold out. Luckily, water didn't seem to stay in clothing for very long in this world.

Moving on, we found that we were now on a narrow path which seemed to wind up another mountain. According to my sister's luck, it was the right way, so we progressed up the winding road. Though we met a couple groups of monster bulls on the way, we cut through them without any real effort. Finally reaching the top of the path, we found that it actually wound back _down_. Continuing even farther, it sloped down and to the left while making a huge,wide rightward curve. Eventually, we arrived at a small clearing amidst the mountains, surrounded by a steep drop-off on all sides, only to have more mountains rise up past there.

Basically, falling into that pit would take forever to climb back out of, if the fall didn't kill you immediately anyway. "Who the hell could possibly find this place?" I said aloud in wonder. In fact, why was there anything buried this far in the mountains anyway? Because the hermit obviously lived here, his house was just ahead. We slowly approached the little squarish shack, which looked no larger than one room, and probably provided nothing more than shelter from the weather. It should be impossible to live in such a place.

As if to prove otherwise, there sat a man, legs crossed as if in meditation, directly in front of the small shelter. He was obviously very, very old, with a long white beard. He wore a dougi, similar to the ones worn by the martial arts club at school, though it looked more... real? Kind of like it was handmade, not made in a factory, I guess. Like the elves, he had a golden '?' floating above his head. As soon as we were a meter away, his eyes opened and he asked, "Ye wish to be disciples?"(1) At first, his formal tone set us back. In a couple moments, we recovered, answering with a similar intonation.

"No, we came here to ask about this book." With a bow, I handed the book over and he skimmed through it quickly.

"Did ye steal this?" the words came unexpectedly, and we both waved frantically while denying it.

"We found the book in an abandoned house in the woods. We asked the elves the author refers to about 'the time before', but they had little memory of that time. They did manage to remember yo-thee," Keiko slowly explained, still speaking formally. The old man nodded a number of times after this.

"If thou rememberst, could thou please tellest us about 'the time before'?" I asked hesitantly.

However, instead of answering my question, the old man asked his own. "The elves did not remember 'the time before'?" We both nodded slowly as he rubbed his chin. Whatever he was thinking, I didn't have the first clue what it could be. "Unfortunately, now that I am trying to remember that time myself, I cannot recall much at all. It seems as if some outside force is interfering with my memory." He gave a shallow bow while he apologized. "The only thing I am able to recall is a large, grassy field, much larger than any individual floor inside Aincrad."

"Ah..." Just that information really didn't explain anything. With all this running around, we still hadn't figured out _anything_ since hearing about this strange quest from those two gossips in the «Starting City».

"Though it does not pertain specifically to 'the time before', I believe I can be of some help, because I recognize that handwriting. This book belongs to a woman named Fiona. Though it was quite some time ago, I heard she was going to the seventh floor. Before she departed, she came to me. She told me that something was gravely wrong, and that she needed to find her daughter in «Maren», a small town on that floor. From her writing, it appears that she will not be able to answer your question, but may offer ye some insight into just what keeps her from doing so. If ye look in «Maren», ye may find her, or at least a lead as to where she went."

"Thank you for the advise master," we both bowed respectfully as we accepted the notebook back from the old man. He closed his eyes, apparently returning to his meditation, and we turned to leave the small mountaintop clearing. Just as we neared the edge, about on the path back up, Keiko suddenly perked up.

"Wait a second, we went into the house and found the book, so we just grabbed it. That means we _did_ steal it, doesn't it?" As I raised an eyebrow to her comment, A shadow suddenly cast over us from behind.

"What didst thou say?" Slowly, we both turned around, looks of terror mirrored on our faces. When we were both finally facing backward, we stared at the old man with his long white beard. When had he moved anyway? Without warning, his hand shot out, flying all over the place as I felt some small object hit my face repeatedly. Before I could even lurch backward, the attack had ended, leaving both of us lying on our backs while the old master turned the other way.

Without turning back toward us, he slowly spoke. "I did not harm ye because ye appear to have a purpose. However, I cannot overlook your trespass against my friend. Those marks will not come off until ye return with news of mine old friend."

"Waitwaitwait!" we both scrambled to our knees while shouting anxiously. "Isn't there any other way?"

"Split that rock using thy palms only." Both our gazes shifted to the left to follow where the old man was pointing. However, the only rock in that direction was at least two meters tall, and almost as wide.

"Eeehhh?!"

_Author Note: Oh man, busy busy busy._

(1)I'm thinking it was translated this way because he was speaking formally? (No idea why actually) So, I wrote their 'speaking formally' in early modern English to make it stand out. I looked it all up, but probably still got some stuff wrong.


	93. Christmas Special

**Christmas Special**** Chapter xx**

_A/N: Here's a Christmas Special as thanks for 50,000 views! (Even through the Christmas event in the story just ended...)_

_And in case you were wondering, this is _**_totally_**_ non-canon._

**December 25, 2025.**

"Onii-chan, hurry up! We don't want to be late!" Keiko shouted from the front door.

"Oh... Do I really have to go?" I shouted through our open bedroom door and down the stairs. Currently, I was standing in the middle of our room and staring at myself in the mirror. Partially in wonder, and partially in horror.

"Come on, let's just go already!"

"Alright, alright..." I finally gave in, turning away from the stranger in the mirror and heading downstairs.

"We're going out," we called as we headed out the door. There wasn't anyone home to answer, since our parents had gone out to dinner together a little earlier, and I was currently thinking it was probably better that way. Somehow, we'd managed to avoid explaining a lot to our parents about our time in SAO. That included the whole 'I was a girl for two years' thing, luckily.

We trod through the snow on the ground, a few centimeters thick and enough to make nice crunching noises underfoot. We were headed to a very special one-in-a-lifetime event. There was going to be a big Christmas party bash for all the SAO survivors in Tokyo. Rumor had it, the whole thing had been put together by some part of the government, though of course, no one could prove anything.

The biggest thing about this whole event was that it was a cosplay party. That's to say, dress like your character. In fact, I'd heard it was going to be a requirement just to enter. Now, for everyone else, that meant going out and getting some costume clothes. For us though... Well, it wasn't nearly as impossible as it had seemed at first. Somehow, despite being Seventeen now, (probably because we spent two years in SAO actually) puberty hadn't changed us very much at all. In fact, I'd say we probably looked more similar at this age than when we were younger. Thankfully, the most important part, our height, was the same, since it would be impossible to be twins otherwise.

Of course, we both had to wear wigs, since we did not have waist length, blond hair. After that was a lot of makeup to bring our appearances as close to identical as was possible in the real world. Physical rehabilitation had brought our physical builds just about in line as well. That just left getting matching fantasy style cosplay clothes. Since a number of retailers had caught onto the event beforehand, there was plenty of white and red, the main colors of the Knights of Blood. We just went with that, since we'd never seemed to have set outfits before, always managing with whatever we could get our hands on.

For weapons, we'd done what we could, getting the materials and managing to create the general likenesses of our old «Wayfinder» swords. Of course they weren't perfect, but not too shabby either. Overall, we would fit right in... well, maybe not. We'd never fit in in the first place. Whatever the case, I was more irked by the fact that I was totally dressed up like a girl. Back when I'd been looking in the mirror, I could tell that there was no way to tell I was a boy just by looking at me.

As we waited at the bus stop, a strong breeze blew the new flakes of snow sideways in front of us. Some time passed as we waited silently, until finally the bus arrived. We took it from there, across town until we could board a second bus into the center of Tokyo, where the whole thing would be held inside a hugely popular hotel. An hour on the buses brought us to an enormous, brightly lit up building with the moon rising behind it. It was a huge hotel which normally was for the rich and famous, but for just tonight, the entire thing had been rented out for the event.

After walking five blocks, with the snowfall increasing slightly in the meantime, we finally arrived at the front doors. Standing there, two men on either side pushed the double doors aside without a word. Seems our flashy cosplay attire did the trick. Immediately inside the lobby, there were lots of people walking around. Most of them were young, not much older than us, with only a few people above the age of thirty. Everyone wore fantasy clothing which clearly reminded me of the Aincrad garments we all once wore. A couple had even managed to get fake armor, clearly showing they had once been «Tanks».

As we skirted the outer edge of the room, getting a look at the proceedings before we jumped in ourselves, I realized something else which I hadn't come across since SAO. —There were almost no girls present. Of course, I wasn't a girl either, but I was _supposed_ to be one here, due to that long, long past screw-up I made with being late to log on. It was still hard to believe that such a stupid accident lead to some of the most outrageous adventures imaginable, even for those living in a fantasy world. "Huh," I couldn't help smirking when I thought about it.

Suddenly a small hand grabbed my wrist. I glanced up, seeing Keiko looking back at me. "Come on, Onii-chan, let's go." She smiled brilliantly.

"Yeah," I nodded and we moved forward to mix with the crowd. Walking through, we listened to all sorts of conversations, ranging from old rivalries to incomplete business transactions and old crushes. As we passed from one room to another, apparent by the shift from tiled floor to a carpet, we came upon a much thicker bunch of crowd. As we moved around to try and get a look around them, we finally managed to discern the object of such great interest. "Haha, I feel like I shouldn't be surprised," I laughed when I saw, Keiko giggling along as well.

In the center of the half-circle of onlookers, stood Asuna the «Flash» in her instantly recognizable KoB uniform. We'd known her pretty well back in Aincrad ourselves. Moving halfway around the group, which was only constrained to a half-circle because Asuna was against a wall, we managed to push as far as we could inside before leaning up and waving, while shouting, "Hey Asuna!" together. Our voices must have caught her attention, because she got the crowd to clear the way for us.

Moving past the swarm of men, we arrived in the center, greeting Asuna with smiles. To our surprise, there was another person present. I hadn't seen him from far away, because he was dressed up and down in full black attire. He was about our age, with black hair hanging in bangs down the front of his face. After looking for a moment, and finally noticing the curved guard on the sword slung across his back, I realized who it was. However, I caught myself, clearing my throat slightly first. "Kirito-san! Hi!" Since I was really a boy, the one thing that definitely set me apart from Keiko was my voice. We'd done some practice and she'd helped me until I could manage a girl-sounding voice, because explaining the whole 'I'm actually a boy' thing here would be... way past awkward. Especially while I'm still dressed like a girl...

Whatever the case, Kirito didn't notice anything and grinned with a small wave before responding. "Hey you two. Long time no see." Even in the KoB uniform colors, he still recognized us, which was good. Then again, we were some of the only girls there were back in Aincrad, so it probably wasn't hard to remember.

"What are you two doing? Well, besides being surrounded by old fans," Keiko snickered.

"We were trying to find the main room, I heard there's going to be an announcement at the beginning of the party, it's in a couple minutes," Asuna explained. We both nodded, but we couldn't makes heads or tails of this place ourselves, so we wouldn't be of any help. Instead, we hung out and chatted for a bit, until a loud voice boomed over everything. It seemed to be coming from every available speaker in every direction.

"Hello everyone, how are you liking this special "SAO survivors Christmas Party?" Loud cheers exploded in every direction. We joined in with the shouting ourselves. "Good to hear. I'd like to tell you all that there are a number of special events running. In the parlor on each floor of the hotel, we have certain Sword Art Online themed events. There will be a dance party here on the main floor until 2:00 am as well. So, everyone, I hope you enjoy yourselves! Without further ado, let's get this party started!" As the invisible speaker finished his speech, the crowed erupted into loud cheers, only to be outplayed by the loud dance music which boomed from wall to wall.

"SAO themed events? I want to see that!" I shouted to Keiko, who nodded emphatically. We started pushing our way toward the stairs, and I noticed that Kirito and Asuna were moving the same way.

"You guys too?" Keiko shouted over. They both offered wide grins in response. Once we made it to the stairs, we climbed up to the second floor's parlor. According to the floor directory on the wall, this hotel had ten floors. So, while it was a party, there would also be lots of fun things to do.

While most of the people who were trapped had hated SAO and probably never wanted to hear the name again, that probably didn't apply to the ones here. By the look of everyone I'd passed, they had all been adventurers. They all wore costumes and were armed with swords or other types of weapons. I didn't see anyone unarmed. I guess it's because it was common sense in SAO to always have a weapon, that carried over to an SAO themed party. Well, we were the same way ourselves, weren't we? That, paired with there not being anywhere near six thousand people here, meant that everyone who decided to show was probably all the higher levels or even the frontliners.

Well, all of that doesn't really matter. It was a party, and we were here to have fun, simple as that. As we arrived in the parlor on the second floor, along with a few others, we found that the special event here was a duel ring. They had foam swords to use in case anyone hadn't brought their own weapons(or they weren't combat useable). A couple of the staff actually looked rather surprised how _everyone_ had brought a weapon with them. Deciding to skip that for now, we moved on to check out the third floor while a few guys laughed loudly while dueling. On the stairs, we came across another familiar face.

"Hey, Kirito, Asuna!" the shout came from above. We all looked up to find Klein, with his signature bandana at the top of the next flight. "Oh, Rei, Rai, you're here too?" After he stared for a couple seconds with a "eehhh..." kind of sound coming quietly from his mouth, I realized what it was. Klein was one of the only people who knew I was a boy. Figuring I may as well let him know, I gave a very guy-ish grin and a thumbs up. Immediately afterward, I sent a kick straight up into his stomach as he launched himself at my sister.

"Jeez, you never change, do you?" I sighed.

"Hahaha..." he laughed loudly, holding his stomach as he knelt down in front of us. We all moved on, finding that the third floor's event was a crazy puzzle, the kind that we frequently had to solve to enter the Floor Dungeons. Skipping that as well, we continued upward to find out what the rest of the events were before they were totally crowded. The fourth floor was a running race, the fifth floor a scavenger hunt, and the sixth a bar for the adults to drink at. We continued up, finding that the seventh held an SAO trivia game, while the two above that had 'quests' similar to the quests in SAO, with various objectives. However, the top floor was currently not open, so we made our way back down again.

Right as we turned, two more people suddenly called out to our group. I couldn't quite remember who they were at first, but after they introduced themselves, I recalled the names. One was the blacksmith Lizbeth, while the other was the most famous «Beast Tamer», Silica, who had been the only person to tame a «Feathery Dragon». Though it was said that training familiars was all a matter of luck, it didn't change the fact that she was the most notable for it.

Apparently they both knew Kirito, though honestly, who didn't? Though (like most things it seemed) there was no concrete evidence, most everyone believed he was the person responsible for clearing SAO twenty-five levels early. Of course, they also didn't have the first clue _how_, but then again, what did that matter if they couldn't be sure if he even did it in the first place, right?

We told them that the last floor wasn't open yet for some reason, and together, we all started descending the stairs again. We'd been out of SAO for a number of months already, but it was still pretty tiring to climb all these stairs.(The elevators were absolutely packed to their limits.)

As we slowly descended again, which was thankfully much easier than climbing, I noticed that we'd managed to pick up a total of seven people with us. It occurred to me that we had a full SAO party, which made me grin. While most of the upper floors were still relatively empty, a number of old men had assembled at the bar and seemed to be talking about fishing. On the third floor, it appeared that there were a number of people scratching their heads at the surprisingly complicated puzzle which had been set up. Once we made it back to the second floor, where a whole lot of people stood around now, it appeared that everyone had taken a liking to the dueling matches.

It seemed that it was set up in the classic SAO «First Strike» style, which gave the win to whoever landed the first blow. While back in SAO, it was the preferred mode due to not wanting to badly injure others, they had probably just done it here for the sake of time, since the parlor could only hold three matches at once. Everyone was dressed up nicely, and most in clothes that they could fight in even. Also, they all had perfect composure, like was only seen in hardened warriors. Despite all that, a lot of them were only so-so with their weapons. A few even looked confused as they fought. The heavy reliance on the System Assist seemed to have limited any real combat knowledge gained from the whole experience. Others were much better, probably having been frontliners who pushed their combat skills to the limit, even with the System Assist.

Of course, it probably didn't help much that no one was totally 100% due to only being part-way through physical rehabilitation, but we were all in the same boat there, so it wasn't as much of an issue in match balancing as it was with skill overall. Despite many sub-par fights, there were a few extraordinary ones mixed in. For the fun of it, both Keiko and I entered a couple. Of course, we had the advantage of having learned real combat skills during our time in SAO, due to the System Assist malfunctioning. Of course, we had no trouble winning a couple matches. That's not to say we could fight as well as back then ourselves, simply due to not having superhuman strength and speed, but compared to the light speed movements of enemies back in SAO, it seemed like everyone else was standing still.

Kirito and Asuna also went a couple matches, coming out victorious themselves as well. With everyone laughing, we headed back for the stairs, finding that they had made little progress on the third floor's puzzle. After all going for a race, which Klein won simply because he was the tallest, we tried out the scavenger hunt on the sixth floor, which apparently had us searching for replicas of SAO's magical crystals. Of course, Keiko managed to find all twenty-seven one in under one minute, which didn't surprise anyone in the group except Silica, who we hadn't really gotten to know before. Of course, the hotel staff stared with mouths agape and eyes bugging out as we ascended again.

Apparently, the bar also served the food here, so we all stopped for a while to eat. Of course, even while eating, everyone could hardly settle down long enough to put anything in their mouth. Silica and Asuna talked all about make-up and other girl stuff while Kirito gave Klein and Lizbeth a surprisingly in-depth explanation about some sort of machine he was working on to allow the «Amusphere» (the «Nerve Gear's» safer successor) to allow one to dive into the real world— — sort of.

When we'd eventually finished our meal, we headed on up again. On the seventh floor, it looked like Argo was wiping the floor with anyone else who decided to play, so we skipped that and moved on again. The last two floors had some sort of quests, so we asked about those. From the sound of eighth floor's quest, we had to go around on the first floor and talk to a number of staff working among the crowd to collect a number of things to complete it. They didn't tell us exactly what we would win at the end, but they hinted that it would be cool. All shrugging together, we went on our way.

I guess old habits really do die hard, because we also went and asked about the ninth floor quest before heading to complete them. This one required us to get some food from the bar on the sixth floor and give it to the staff working in the dueling arena on the second floor. We all laughed while we shot down the stairs again, joking about old times and past events. Hitting the bar first, we bought a bunch of french fries and continued on down, dropping them with the second floor staff and receiving a little pin each, to mark that we'd completed the task.

One more staircase down, and we waded through the huge crowds of dancing partygoers to find the numerous hotel staff members, all working to collect the items we needed. It took nearly twenty minutes, even with all of us splitting up to search, before we finally met up again in the relatively empty lounge area set aside, where the blaring music wasn't as loud. After we all checked that we'd gotten everything described by the eighth floor staff, we headed back up, completing both 'quests'. Strangely, the supposedly cool prizes were just these little gemstone-looking things. We all shrugged, confused by the reward, before going on our way.

"So, the only place we haven't really checked out is the third floor, with that weird puzzle, you want to go see if they're figured it out yet?" Silica asked everyone.

"Well, I don't know, I'm not much good at puzzles, I always left that stuff up to the other guilds..."

"Yeah, like us, who always had to figure everything out," Asuna complained. While Klein was bowing and apologizing, Kirito perked up.

"Sure, I worked on a couple of those puzzles, and these two helped me solve the one on the first floor," sticking a thumb back in our direction.

"How can you call that 'helped'? All we did was find the right spot and throw a rock at the button to open the door." Keiko shook her head sighing while I tried to wave off the complement.

"Whatever the case, let's check it out already," Lizbeth urged us all on. Down more stairs, with a 'I'm glad they had «Teleport Gates» in SAO' comment from someone, and we arrived at the third floor. By now, there were quite a few people here, all puzzling over the, well, puzzle. While Klein and Lizbeth hung back, apparently not ones for puzzles, the other five of us moved forward, finding Thinker and Yulier standing at the center of all the activity. Just by the way they stood near each other, they somehow made it obvious that they were a couple.

"Hey, Thinker, what's going on with this puzzle? Didn't you used to help the fronliners solve the odd puzzle or two?" Kirito stepped up, speaking to catch his attention. During our time in SAO, Thinker had aged from not-quite-out-of-teens-yet into a full grown man.

"Oh, Kirito, yeah. Think you could lend us a hand? This puzzle is a lot more complicated than it looks at first. Whoever designed it for the hotel staff is a genius. From what we've figured out, these levers here move these markers here." He pointed, to the levers at the front of the room, then the small metal rods sticking from the strange metal casing it was all embedded in. The whole system had probably been constructed and brought in because they couldn't well build it all into the floor. This was a hotel after all.

"These markers move along these paths," his finger traced a number of paths moving up the 'board' this all seemed to form, until they reached a spot where all the little paths ended. "After a while, we managed to get all of them up here, but once we got that far, it didn't seem to allow us to move onto the next part, which are these dials here. It seems like the dials are locked, and they won't move no matter how we position the other parts. As he showed us the dials, which sat atop a small box up from the rest of the mechanical monster, Kirito looked at them closely.

"Heh, I see your problem already. They definitely took their time to research, didn't they?" From his pocket, Kirito pulled one of the small stones he had received, showing it to Thinker with a smile.

"What's that?"

"This is the quest flag you guys are missing," Kirito explained, turning and pressing the stone into a small indent in the top of one of the dials. He waved his hand for the rest of us to help out, and we quickly filled all the dials with a stone. "Try it out now." Thinker nodded, waving a number of others over to the levers. They quickly operated the levers in such a way that said they'd studied the complex movements on the metal markers, quickly advancing them to the end of their lanes. Once there, Thinker came back over to the dials, successfully turning them.

With loud metal gear sounds, we all looked to see that a big section of the surface underfoot began to turn, everyone quickly hopped off that space, while Thinker spun the dials in all sorts of combinations. The mixed up picture rotated here and there, slowly beginning to become more visible, until it all snapped into place with a loud _chack!_

The circle turned out to be the nostalgic picture used on the front of the SAO game box, with the knight atop a hill, riding a horse, in front of the hundred floor castle. This whole section suddenly popped upward, spring-loaded phrase popping out. "Tenth floor has been opened," it read. After a moment, I realized that it was referring to the tenth floor, which had been closed for an unknown reason. Kirito was right, they really had done their research. If I was right, that meant the tenth floor was some sort of replica of a dungeon. Although, it also occurred to me that they had messed up one bit of information. Any quest flags necessary to finish a puzzle were found before the puzzle, not after. Oh well, I shrugged it off, maybe they just didn't want to lug that giant metal contraption any higher than this floor. At about the same time, a voice came over the loudspeakers. "The tenth floor is now open, everyone please proceed upward in a timely manner."

Everyone crowded the stairway, all moving up to the tenth floor together, our group included, rushing upward as fast as we could. I heard a number of surprised shouts from up ahead, though I couldn't be sure why, so I generally ignored them. We eventually reached the top, opening the door and pouring onto the previously unexplored section of the party area. Standing packed together in the dark space, we all looked around in confusion. Maybe they hadn't had time to prepare after we suddenly solved the puzzle and rushed upstairs all in one go? No way, they'd just announced that they _were_ ready... Another minute passed as the strangely enclosed room filled in. Finally it seemed like everyone was inside when the stairway door swung closed with a loud _thunk_ sound.

_Tac, tac._ With two quick sounds, all the lights turned on, revealing a giant, blue monster. Without a thought, all weapons were drawn. Seeming to float near the monster, were two hp bars, at first glance looking exactly like the ones in SAO. After a brief hesitation, everyone fell on the giant blue monster, the name 『Gleameyes』 appearing above the floating hp bars. I recognized it as the boss from the seventy-fourth floor, which nearly wiped out a full party of the strongest members of The Army, until Kirito stepped in to help, at the same time revealing his Unique Skill «Dual Blades».

The large monster reared up, bringing its huge sword down and slashing horizontally toward the mass of people. All weapons went up, deflecting the attack away together as the hp of the Boss monster continued to decrease. Grabbing hold of Keiko, we darted left to get out of the mob, when I realized something. "Look at that," I pointed, at the hp bar. From this angle, I could tell that it wasn't simply floating in midair. It looked like a small metallic construction, which I could just barely tell was connected to the monster's side by wires.

With its first hp bar depleted already, I figured it out. The 'Boss Monster' wasn't really making any sort of strong attacks, and whenever it did, everyone seemed able to parry rather easily. Pairing that with the faint mechanical sounds I could hear over the shouting crowd, I couldn't help but grin. Drawing our own weapons and rushing forward, ducking an attack and jabbing our fake weapons against the side of the monster, I felt the difference immediately, as I'm sure the others in the front did. Underneath the blueish colored fur, there was definitely metal. Within the next few seconds, the last of the Boss' hp disappeared and light exploded everywhere.

When I could see again, it seemed as if the room had expanded greatly. There were people all around, and I suddenly realized that the enclosed feeling the room gave before was from the black walls which seemed to encircle the fight. I'd been used to such room in SAO, so it only occurred to me now that they were out of place inside a hotel. As I looked all around, bright lights shot from all over, like larger versions of the little fireworks kids played with at festivals. There were a lot of people seated at the tables all around, applause exploding from every direction. I looked up to find a large screen straight ahead, the bluish limbs of the monser we had just fought poking out from behind it. Across the middle of the screen read:

.

Congratulations!

Clear Time: 3:45:12

.

I couldn't help but laugh. That's right. We'd done a quest to get an item needed, to open the dungeon, and fought a boss(Which I'd guess was a big robot they'd made just for this). They'd essentially just run us through a shortened version of clearing a floor in SAO. And everyone here must have been watching. The question was, who were these people? They were all older, dressed not in clothes of Aincrad, but of this world. Then, with the first cry, it suddenly became very obvious.

"Mom? Dad?" came from somewhere amongst our group. Similar shouts began going up all around. No way... the thought passed through my mind as my eyes darted over all the faces in the crowd until—

—There!? Grabbing Keiko's wrist again, I found that it was unnecessary, because we both started running at the same time. Near the wall on the left, our parents were sitting at a round table with four seats present. Two were empty. We slowed, eventually coming to a stop in front of them, big smiles on our faces.

It took us a moment to realize why our parents were staring at us with confused looks. Of course, that was the moment we both remembered to sheathe our swords. Then, "Mom, Dad, it's us," we said together.

Of course, they did a triple-take at that, our mother eventually managing to say, "Eiji? Keiko? That's really you?"

"Yeah, we never really explained did we..." I said slowly, realizing that this was pretty much exactly why we had avoided doing so.

"Due to some... issues, we wound up looking like this," Keiko explained waving her arms down our fronts (rather unnecessarily) to refer to our current appearances.

"...Twins?" Dad asked, raising an eyebrow. We both nodded slowly. Suddenly, a wide grin spread over both of their faces as they suppressed laughter. "You two definitely won't get away without an explanation."

"Eehh?!" After our exclamation, a voice came over the speakers again, informing us that dinner was about to be served, and to take our seats with our families. We sat quickly. My stomach was nearly growling with hunger after all that running around.

"It's easy to see that you don't hold only hatred for that game. Tell us about your time there," our father said with a smile.

"Also, tell us about the people you met there. I recall seeing you with quite a few of them. You have to introduce us to your friends," came from my mother while she rested her cheek on the back of her hand.

"I guess we have no choice..." I said in a low voice, though I couldn't help but smile.

Keiko giggled next to me. "Hehehe, where to begin..."

**_Merry Christmas Everyone!_**


	94. Chapter 90

**Tanuki**** Chapter 90**

"Aaahahahahaha!"

"It's not funny!"

"Yes it is! You said you were going out to do something... and you... came back... like that!" Thinker finally leaned so far back in his chair laughing, that the whole thing tipped over and he started rolling around on the floor. Of course, the reason for this was the big black markings on our faces. When offered the option between splitting a huge rock with our hands and waiting until we found the person we were looking for- in order to remove the marks- we chose the latter. So now we were back in the «Black Iron Castle» to tell Thinker.

"So... so how did that... happen anyway?" he managed through fits of laughter.

"There was this old man and he drew it all over our faces," I explained, trying not to growl at the guild leader. Of course, my explanation only served to renew Thinker's laughing fits.

"Well, we'll be going now, just wanted to report that we met with complete failure for the moment." While he continued howling away, we both shuffled out of the room and slowly walked back toward the entrance. Of course, these markings couldn't be removed until we found some old lady named Fiona. And that old woman was on the seventh floor, in a town called «Maren». For that reason, we had to wait until the frontliners cleared the sixth floor, which would still take quite some time. At the moment, it was getting toward nighttime of our second day on this floor, so we probably had eight to ten more days to wait before we could move on.

Near the castle entrance, we passed a mirror, both stopping to look at our faces again. I don't know how he managed it, but the big black marks which covered the area around our eyes, as well as the ones on our cheeks and nose left a single distinct impression. _Tanuki_.(1) After a minute, we continued on, shaking our heads. Would we really get through this next week like this? Maybe if we could get another set of cloaks for the time being...

While thinking these kind of thoughts, we headed out for our nightly hunt.

_ Author Note: Short chapter this time, since it's basically just a lead-in to a short timeskip._

(1)Tanuki is a Japanese racoon dog, just google it.


	95. Chapter 91

**Humans, Elves, and an Unknown Story Chapter 91**

For the next ten days, we went about business as normal, though we did our best to avoid attention. Of course, it didn't work all the time, since the giant black marks scrawled across our faces weren't easy to miss. Strangely enough, it actually seemed like our business picked up somehow. Maybe just because the strange marks on our faces set us apart from everyone else, I don't know really.

Finally, the frontliners cleared the sixth floor on the twenty-ninth, almost February. The next day, we went to Thinker, telling him that we would be taking the day off to work on getting rid of our marks. After teleporting up to the seventh floor's main town «Finreo», we looked around for the first time, having skipped the opening ceremony yesterday to finish some extra orders for The Army.

After a couple minutes, we found an information NPC to sell us a floor map. Keiko pulled it up and checked the location of «Maren», the town where the old lady Fiona was supposed to be. We set out from town, many others moving around already as well. This floor immediately set itself apart from the rest in terms of landscape. The entire thing was barren, totally flat the whole way to the floor's edge in all directions. There was a very slight scrubby grass over the rocky ground, though a light snowfall covered everything already, slight dots still drifting down from the sky even as we walked.

Numerous groups also dotted the plain, moving in all directions. A few seemed to be moving parallel with us as well. We picked up the pace, eventually sprinting to cross the white ground to the outlying village, which apparently was on the opposite side of the floor, all the way at the East while «Finreo» was on the extreme West. At our incredible pace, we crossed the floor in about twenty minutes, slowing to a regular walk as we moved into the Inner Area boundaries.

"Where to check first..." I wondered aloud.

"We should probably ask the other NPCs about her," Keiko advised, so we went into town, looking all around for someone to ask. Strangely, there wasn't anyone in the street. We went into the first bar to ask the bartender. The man we found in the little place was tall and fat, with black buzzed hair. "Do you know where we could find Fiona?" It was a basic question which most NPCs should understand. That is, asking where another NPC is.

"I know, but why should I tell you?" was the fat man's retort. Why couldn't anything be easy?

"We're looking for her," I answered, but the barkeep just stood there with his arms crossed. "We have something important to talk to her about."

"Mmmm, I guess I'll tell you. She lives in the house at the South edge of town. I have to warn you though, whatever marbles she had once, they are long gone now." Despite his strangely cryptic warning, we thanked the old man and quickly shuffled out of the pub. Without a moment's hesitation, we shot over to the south edge of town. At the end of the South road, leading into the field, there was a building standing on either side. One of them must be the right place, so we checked the doors, finding the right hand building to be open.

"Excuse us..." we said aloud while entering the medium size house, composed of smooth gray stone comparable to the stuff used in some dungeons. We walked slowly through the entrance, closing the door behind us. Down a short hall, and we arrived in what seemed to be a kitchen, and dining room together, since the table was larger than one would usually find in a regular kitchen. Sitting right there at the table was an old, deeply wrinkled woman. She was dressed in a dark blue nightgown, even through it was morning already. Though the name that appeared was simply 『NPC』, I asked, "Are you Fiona?"

The old woman nodded, "That's me. So, how do you know my name?" As she spoke, the NPC tag was replaced with her true name.

"We found your book." I slid the old book across the table to her, and she picked it up slowly. While she opened it, flipping through the pages, we both took seats across from her.

"If I remember correctly, I laid a trap on this book which would crush everything within thirty meters into oblivion... How did you disarm my trap?"

"We didn't, we grabbed the book and ran for our lives," Keiko explained with a grin.

The old woman let out an odd chuckling sound at her explanation. "So, what do you want anyway?"

— — ? Wait, now that I thought about it, what _did_ we want? We'd originally started following the clues because that old man had talked about it leading to something great, but that didn't appear to be the case anymore. So, just what were we following? There was no problem finding out about the time before Aincrad, but what did it matter really? It was all a made-up story anyway. This world had been created artificially, so any 'past' was just a story programmed into this world's people. And yet, I still wanted to know...

"We wanted to know if you could tell us about 'the time before.' Since the time you wrote that, did you uncover anything?" Keiko asked.

"Well, not exactly. Here's what happened back then: The forest elf I found couldn't remember either, so we figured there was something stopping us from remembering. The elf used magic to bring me to his village, where the matter was brought up. They even sent a messenger to the dark elves, warning them of the trouble, which, if you know of the strife between the two races, is nothing short of a miracle. Both races met to discuss the problem, and came to the obvious conclusion. Combine all their magic to overpower the dark magic and restore the memory of one person. Unsurprisingly, they couldn't agree on who to use their power for, since both sides wanted it to be their own member." We listened to her story intently. It sounded surprisingly normal, the way she recounted everything in shorthand. It was just like it would sound when someone recounted a fantasy novel they read.

"So, I volunteered, and after some debate, I managed to persuade both sides. While I wasn't part of either group, it also meant that either side would be able to influence me for their own gain. Well, that's what I let them think at least. After some preparations, they held a great ceremony and recovered my memory in full." So she does know? I thought. The thought must have shown on my face, because she looked directly at me when she said, "However. No one expected the forces which originally blocked our memory to attack directly during the ceremony. Mere moments after my memory was recovered, dark beings attacked from every direction. The elves were weak after using their magic, so they could offer little resistance. In the last moment before they reached me, one elf managed to teleport me away from harm."

"So, doesn't that mean you recovered your memory?" Keiko asked aloud when the old woman stopped speaking.

"Yes and no. That's not the end of the story. I went into hiding, but the forces searching for me were beyond persistent. I managed to avoid them for some time, eventually taking refuge at the hut of an old acquaintance, a hermit far removed in the mountains."

"We met him," I noted.

"It was still no good though. I could feel my persuers closing in on me, even there, and decided to make a gamble. I traveled up to this floor in search of my daughter. I found her here, in this very house, and told her of my plight. Then, I used all of my remaining magic shards to transfer the entirety of my memory of 'the time before' to her. I thought that if I gave her the memory, while continuing to evade to force after me, both she and the memories would be protected from harm. However, I was mistaken, while I was here, they finally caught me, seeing that I had just transferred the memories away. Since I couldn't remember anything, they totally ignored me, moving on to hunt my daughter. In the end, my plan failed completely, and I even brought danger onto my own daughter. She used a teleport crystal to escape temporarily, though I don't know if she was able to avoid them after that. I have no idea what happened to her after that time, I haven't heard of her ever since."

We stayed quiet for a minute, absorbing the story we had just heard. So, some evil force was responsible for all the people we had met not remembering anything. And the one person who did remember had moved all her memories to someone else. We would have to find this daughter.

"So, do you know where she might be?" I asked. Even though she had explained that she couldn't at the end of her story, I had to check anyway.

"No, I have no idea where she is. In fact, it has been some number of months since then."

"Ahh, then, what is her name at least?" Keiko asked what was going to be my next question. If we at least had a name to go off of, we could buy information on the NPCs location from Argo, since she recorded where they all were. Even if she was on a floor above here, Argo would have the location of all the NPCs in just a few days after the floor opened.

"Her name is Ferin," the woman answered.

"Then we'll do our best to find her," I assured the tired looking lady.

"I'm counting on you," she said, bowing until her forehead touched the table. We stood, not asking for the notebook back this time, since it had been returned to its owner and we wouldn't need it anymore. Of course, the first thing to do would be heading back to that hermit in the mountains to get these marks removed from our faces. After that, we could message Argo to find out the location of the NPC we were searching for to continue. We were finally getting closer to the information we wanted to know.

—Although, I still couldn't shake the question: Why?


	96. Cheatsheet 4

—

«»

『』

#######

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

#######

exp 775000

col 1550000

#######

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 0

STR 34

AGI 26

HP 3882

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 0

STR 34

AGI 26

HP 3882

#######

One-handed Sword 153

Sp: 235700

Sprint 140

Sp: 197500

Battle Healing 112

Sp: 127500

Dagger 154

Sp: 23900

Metal Working 175

Sp: 310000

Metal Refining 173

Sp: 301500

#######

# E Note

Cloth shirt 2 2 Green

Cloth skirt 2 2 Blue

Boots 2 2 Brown

Veiled Wayfinder 2 2 10S 10D – mainly black

Harmonious Convoy 2 2 10S 5D – mainly white/gray

Leather Vest 2 2

Leather Bracer 2 2

Half-cloak 2 2 Black

Cloth Sack 1 0 Holds things

Various Ores xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

blessed twins shard of power I 16

10% full

#######

Level chart

1 4000 0-4000

2 8000 4000-12000

3 12000 12000-24000

4 16000 24000-40000

5 20000 40000-60000

6 24000 60000-84000

7 28000 84000-112000

8 32000 112000-144000

9 36000 144000-180000

10 40000 180000-220000

11 44000 220000-264000

12 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20= 80000 760000-840000

#######

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

#######

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

#######

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut


	97. Chapter 92

**Change of Plans**** Chapter 92**

While we got on our way back to «Finreo», so we could use the «Teleport Gate» back to the second floor, I sent a message to Argo, asking if she knew the location of an NPC named Ferin. Her instantaneous reply said she didn't, as well as, did I mean Fenrir or Fenen? Probably two similarly named NPCs she did know. I replied 'no,' and she told me she'd keep an ear to the ground for the name and tell me when it popped up. With a simple thank you, I shook my head and Keiko sighed. So, it seemed like this NPC would be on a higher floor and we would have to wait again to find her.

Since we didn't have anything to say, we ran on in silence, back through the crowded frontline town and its fields, through the «Teleport Gate», and through the second floor's «Urbus», and up into the mountains. Since we already knew the path form last time, we set off that way, eventually scaling the same cliff face as before, and heading down the long mountain path. Through the endless watery cave, out the other end, and up the side of another mountain, we fought off the sparse groups of monsters on the way until wefinally got back to that small clearing in the mountains. Jeez, this place was just as bad as the jungle...

While I was shaking off those sullen thoughts, we stepped into the small area around the shack, the old hermit seemingly not having moved at all since the last time we saw him. Actually, there was a good chance he hadn't...

—But anyway, I shook away my random thoughts again. We walked over and he looked up at us silently. "We found Fiona. She's fine, but can't remember anything," Keiko started,

And I continued, "She gave her memories to her daughter, who has been missing ever since."

The old man was silent for a minute. "So, little Ferin is missing..."

Since he didn't seem to have anything to say, I gentry edged in, "So, about removing these marks-"

"I have one more favor to ask ye. Please find Ferin. Then I will remove your marks."

My fist clenched. "You old geez-"

"Is there any other way?" Keiko cut in before I could finish.

"There is always the rock." Again, he pointed across the platform to the boulder larger than us.

"Of course there is..." I grumbled as we turned to leave. Apparently finding our coversation concluded, the sly old man stayed silent as we slowly walked back up the path. "We don't know when the floor with Ferin on it will open, what are we going to do until then?" I asked aloud.

"I guess we don't have any choice but to deal with it..." Keiko spoke while wearing a frown. Another ridiculous trek through the mountains finally brought us back to the small space outside town, when we received a message out of the blue.

"It's Thinker. He wants to know if we can meet him now," I summarized his rather wordy message into just that. Always one for formalities, this guild leader of ours.

"Well, it's not like we have anything else to do now that we lost our last lead," Keiko sighed. I nodded and we continued into town, teleporting back to the first floor again. Normally, since it was the middle of the day, other towns would be empty because everyone was out hunting, but that didn't happen in this city. So, while we ran down the now-familiar city streets, I noticed that there were a lot of people sitting around. Of course, they were all dressed in basic starting equipment, meaning they were the ones just sitting around and waiting for everyone else to do the dangerous work for them.

Well, on some level, it made sense. As long as they stayed here, they would not die. Simple as that. It was the method which would give the highest probability of surviving until the end of this world.

If the others were strong enough to beat it that is.

Reaching the Black Iron Castle, we went inside, skirting around the «Monument of Life», the huge stone that didn't actually have our names on it anymore, and headed to the first staircase, up to the third floor. The halls of the castle were completely empty at this time of day. Of course, Thinker would be the only one here. I wondered when he got time to train, he had to keep his level up somehow, right? Although, he seemed to take the management of MTD more seriously. (MTD standing for MMO Today, named for a gaming website Thinker had run before SAO. It was the actual name of the guild everyone simply called «The Army».)

Knocking on the door, Thinker immediately called us in. Stepping inside, we exchanged a quick greeting before getting to whatever he'd called us here for.

"So. Partly with your help, the strongest of our members have managed to catch up to the frontliners. There are about fifteen of them now, but in the next few weeks the number should increase to almost thirty members."

"Woah, really? That's great!" I exclaimed. That was exactly the reason we had joined in the first place, to ensure that the lower levels could catch up and help the frontliners.

"It is. I know the stats of all the guild members, so I can manage everything. Except for you guys. I've never been entirely sure where you fit in. I remember you were a lot stronger than us when we first met, so I've always considered you higher level, but I don't really know. I wanted to ask you to join the new frontline members, but of course only if your stats are high enough."

"Oh..." He'd gone in circles a bit trying to make his point, but it pretty much made sense once it was all together.

"Sure, that's fine, here:" Keiko said, while pulling up her menu. I could tell she was about to give him a run-down on all our stats. Normally that would be considered crazy, but he was our guild leader, so I guess it was just natural.

"Level: 20. Strength: 34. Agility: 26. HP: 3882." She switched to the skills menu and continued. "One-handed Sword: 153. Sprint: 140. Battle Healing: 112. Dagger: 154. Metal Working: 175. Metal Refining: 173."

Thinker stayed quiet for a minute while he considered our stats. Then, he took a slow breath, before beginning to speak. "Ok, and that goes for both of you?" We nodded together. Though he raised an eyebrow at it, he didn't question how that worked, and went on. "Well, you aren't very far behind frontline-level. On the other hand, you skill proficiencies are much higher than normal. I mean, you actually got «Battle Healing» to level 112?

"Yeah, somehow..." we mumbled. Because of our skill reset, that skill had started at level 100. We'd actually only increased it twelve times in the last month or so.

"But stats aside, you two are smiths. You've made some amazing weapons for everyone else, but do you have good weapons of your own?" Actually, I could kind of understand where is concern came from. With the orders every day, they gave us enough material to construct the weapons they called for. However, there was no extra to use for ourselves. To make our own weapons, we would have to go and find the materials like anyone else. Of course, we hadn't really considered it since we already had good swords.

"Oh, that's not a problem, ours are good enough." I assured him.

"Umm, are you sure about that? You don't have much in the way of armor either..." he pointed out. Ehh... he had us there. All we had were old leather vests and bracers we'd gotten... back on the third floor, I think. It was actually so long ago I couldn't even be sure.

"Well, that is true..." Apparently, we would gain our next skill slot at level 22. Then we would be able to get «Tailoring» and make our own armor, since NPC shops still wouldn't sell us any. Of course, at our current rate, it would take a number weeks to level up twice more, and an unknown amount of time after that until we could actually make decent leather armor. Of course, the other option would be to use metal armor until then, though we'd have to find a mob to drop it or a merchant with two of the same, since NPCs wouldn't sell us any battle equipment. And now that I thought about it, with our current build, heavier armor wouldn't be much of an issue, considering how we had an unusually high STR parameter.

Whatever the case, we could figure that out later. Currently, I drew my sword for Thinker to examine, so he could be sure that at least our weapons were up to date. "W,what is that? I've never seen such high stats before... How did you make a sword like this?" Of course, he could tell we made it because of the 'made by...' tag in the bottom right corner of the weapon's information window. "You think you could possibly..." his words, which were probably going to ask to make such a weapon for others, trailed off, probably because he realized such a sword would require more than the usual ingredients.

"They're reforged special boss drops," Keiko explained simply, while drawing her sword halfway from the sheath so he could see it was the same as the one in his hand.

"Aaah, that's too bad. I never knew you had such strong weapons, they're even +20..."

While Thinker seemed in awe of our weapons for a minute, I started speaking again. "If you want us to, we'll join with the others and help the frontlines again. We were frontliners ourselves some time ago. Just give us a day or so to grind up our levels up a bit more and we'll be set."

"Then we'll do that. Come back the day after tomorrow, and we'll speak again." I retrieved my weapons and we left the castle quickly. "So, where are we going to grind?" I asked aloud, though I could already tell what Keiko's answer would be.

"Just ask Argo-san!"


	98. Chapter 93

**Ready Up**** Chapter 93**

Following our meeting with Thinker, we received some information on the most efficient hunting grounds, and immediately headed toward the one Argo listed both as most efficient, and most dangerous. The mobs were giants, about two and a half the size of a human being, which wielded clubs. Of course, the main requirements for an efficient hunting ground were two: moderate to high amount of exp given per kill, and able to be killed quickly. Despite their intimidating looks, the giants had low defensive stats. Of course, to make up for low defense, monsters would have unnaturally high attack power. That's why the most efficient spots were almost always the most dangerous.

But, we didn't care. As long as we didn't get ourselves killed, it didn't matter. As soon as we arrived at the empty hunting field on the sixth floor, mostly hilly plains with a few high plateaus scattered around the floor. This particular spot was a flattened off area close to the Northwest edge of the floor. It was not that far above the average floor height, however, near the edge, there was a small valley, which cut underneath the cliff. We had brought some food with us, but apart from that, there was nothing to do but grind away and gain as much exp as we could before we were sent to the frontlines.

After a short stretch and numerous deep breaths, we stepped forward, drawing monster aggro, and got to it.

...

Forty-eight hours later, we dragged ourselves back into Thinker's office. "What happened to you?!" were the first words out of his mouth, of course. Since he'd given us two days, we'd grinded for forty hours, so we would have eight to sleep. Eight wasn't nearly enough...

"We did it," we both said together, collapsing into the chairs in front of his desk.

"O,ok? So, how did it go?"

I pulled open my menu to read off our stats. "Level: 25, Strength: 34, Agility: 41, Hp: 4662."

And Keiko continued with our skills. "One-handed sword: 202, Sprint: 158, Battle Healing: 115, Dagger: 203, Metal Working: 175, Metal Refining: 173, Tailoring: 1, Cloth Refining: 1," unnecessarily including the crafting skills which hadn't gained any levels- and the new skills we had acquired from our level 22 skill slot increase too.

Without even stopping to think this time, Thinker blurted out, "You gained five levels in two days?!"

Both nodding, we answered, "Forty hour grind in the most efficient spot there is."

"Ah..." He seemed at a loss for words for a minute, before asking, "So, are you ready to go? It kind of seems like you need some more sleep still..."

"Ehh..." I mumbled. "You have any beds set up?" I was just too tired to go fight anymore right now. Keiko silently agreed as Thinker said they'd set up some cots on the second floor.

"We'll be back in a bit," Keiko said as we both stood up, slowly turning and trudging out the door without even saying goodbye.

...

Some number of hours later, when we finally woke up again, I checked the time, to find that it was about 2:00 pm. The fatigue of the long grind had finally been washed away by enough sleep, so I slid easily out of the hanging cot. It was then that I noticed other people in the room. Their voices, which must have stopped when I woke up for me to not have heard them, caused my to spin halfway around. There, I spotted them about eight meters(26 ft) away, sitting on a bench against the far wall. There were four of them, sitting and chatting about things that my mind wasn't processing at the moment. They didn't appear to be interested in us, so I let out my breath. At least we'd had the common sense (or maybe we were just too tired) to sleep in our clothes.

With my startled mind growing more at ease, I tapped Keiko to wake her up and we walked out of the room, passing by the men with a glance, before heading back to Thinker. After knocking and being called in, we closed the doors behind us and waited for Thinker to explain what we'd be doing exactly.

"We only have fifteen members high level enough to fight on the frontlines. Right now, they're split up into three five-man parties. The first party leader is Raynes, the second is Godar. Both are on the seventh floor hunting. Raynes' party is in a cave to the south. Godar's is at the Eastern edge of the floor. Rei, you head to meet Raynes. Rai, you go to Godar."

"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait," we both waved our arms frantically when we realized what he was saying. "We can't split up."

"It will keep the groups more even," he explained quickly.

"No, I mean, we actually _can't_ split up," I explained. "We can't move more than three hundred fifty meters away from each other."

Thinker raised an eyebrow, though I couldn't be sure if it was at my claim, or the strangely accurate distance I'd given.

Keiko got went on, "It's a special passive skill we have. As we move farther apart, our stats decrease, until they get too low and we can't move because our equipment weighs too much."

"Ah... I've never heard of such a thing before..." Thinker said quietly. "If that's the case, both of you head to the Southern section of the section to find Raynes. The cave is quite large, so it shouldn't be a problem to find." With a brief goodbye and a bow, we got on our way.

Huh, I wonder what it'll be like... being back on the frontlines...


	99. Chapter 94

**Strife**** Chapter 94**

_Author Note: Thanks for pointing out the stat mistakes. I went back and fixed them in all the previous chapters they appeared. They're at 34/41 now with 4462 hp._

In the southern end of the seventh floor, we found a cave. Sprinting in its general direction, we could see it sticking above ground from a very long distance off, since the floor was so flat and barren. Shifting our heading slightly took us straight toward it. About another minute passed before we entered the cave, keeping up our breakneck pace even as we did. The ground sloped downward, and we were finally forced to slow when the path narrowed and began to wind, since we couldn't make sharp turns while sprinting.

At a jog now, we pressed further into the cave. Raynes and his party would be inside somewhere. While Thinker had sent him a message letting him know we were coming, we couldn't be sure if he would get it. While this was technically still the field, it was both underground and in a cave. So, in all likelihood it would have the dungeon 'no friend messages' restriction.

Thankfully, the path didn't split, and after a minute or so, we began to hear slight sounds coming from deeper in. A little farther and we could tell they were sounds of combat. Hurrying on, the path finally split, with three different ways to go. Good thing we were close enough to hear them, I grinned, and we took the left path. Not much farther, we entered a wider room, where we spotted people and monsters alike.

They weren't in any trouble, so we hung back for the moment, watching the fight. There were five of them, three taking the front and two in back. The of the three fronts, one had a straight sword, one a curved, and one with a mace. Two wore heavy armor and massive tower shields, while the curved sword user dressed in medium armor, though still with a rather large round shield. The three were acting as the forward tanks against a huge centipede-looking monster. It had two bars of hp, one and a half of which were already gone.

The monster looked pretty strong, and it had this crazy tactic of circling all around them before attacking with a whipping motion of the back end of its spike-covered body. However, these attacks were futile against the two back row spear users, who planted their feet and used the powerful attack's force to impale their spears farther into the monster. Within a minute, they finished off the centipede's remaining hp and it scattered into polygons all around.

We hesitated. After a fight, everyone would be on edge, so we didn't want to just pop up out of nowhere and scare them half to death. About ten second, they had caught their breath and were again returning their attention to their surroundings. It was then that we stepped forward, slowly, but making out footsteps clap loud enough against the floor for them to hear. Everyone's gazes snapped in our direction, then softened when the saw we were human.

"Hey," I raised a hand and called out, "Thinker sent us to join your group." By our guild icons, which would sit on the left side of our hp bar in their view, they could tell we were in MTD, so the possibility of us lying was minimal.

"Ah, and you are?" The one with the mace and tower shield asked.

"Rei."

"Rai."

"Nice to meet you,"(1) we both bowed.

"And what are your real names?" the same man asked without pause.

A moment of confusion, then, "Oh, that, it's a system thing." While operating my menu to remove my half-cloak.

"We're identical, so our names don't appear when we're dressed the same," Keiko explained.

"Then why do you dress the same? It just creates a hassle for everyone else." We both stood there, stunned for a few moments. I'd never really thought of that before, and no one had ever mentioned it.

"Well, we also get a boost to our stats from dressing the same," Keiko said quickly.

"I've never heard of such a thing." The same mace wielding man said flatly.

"It is true though," I offered. It's not like we were just randomly lying of something.

"Oh? Is that so?" I sighed at his condescending question and brought up my full skills menu, which showed all of my separate skill actives and passives. I tapped 『Stat Boost』 on the list and the description window appeared. Setting just that window to public view, I pushed it over to him. This man was so... I don't know, just plain unfriendly, that I didn't want to give him any more information than was absolutely necessary. He read through the description momentarily, then closed the window.

"So, you aren't lying, but what kind of skill has such a ridiculous passive? Moreover, do you even realize that without a stat above points, that passive won't do anything?" Huh? What did that mean? "By the look on your face, I can tell you don't understand. It said the percent bonus would double. That would give you a two percent bonus. In order to get just one extra point, your STR or AGI would need to be fifty points or more." He stood there after his explanation, arms crossed, with a big frown on his face. Probably waiting for us to respond.

—I, I never thought of that before, I sent my thoughts to Keiko. —Yeah, it always felt like I got stronger, even if it was by a little bit, came back. —That probably means it will give partial points, I thought. —We wouldn't be able to prove it to him though. —I guess we'll just go along for the time being. This guy is really... —Yeah, I can't put a word to it either. I could almost hear Keiko sigh through our link.

"Ok, thanks for letting us know that." I tried to keep my face neutral after I spoke.

"Stay like that, I need to be able to tell you two apart," was his answer, meaning I'd have to go without my half-cloak. Judging by the way he spoke, he must be Raynes. If he wasn't the leader, surely the real leader would have stepped in by now. He finally sent a party invite, which we had no choice but to accept now.

Joining the party, I realized it was actually comprised of men all older than the average age. Everyone was at least in their twenties, with Raynes himself looking about thirty-five, maybe older. Maybe he had something against kids? As we walked slowly down the next tunnel, Raynes spoke up again.

"So, why aren't you two in uniform?" In his usual, condescending tone.

Again, we were confused. "What uniform?"

After a deadpan glare, he ignored Keiko's question and asked, "Are you new recruits? Why are you on the frontlines anyway?"

I couldn't help but scoff at his accusation. "We are not new recruits! We've been helping Thinker out since long before the MTD was an established guild."

"Actually, the first time we met him, he was trying to teach how to use sword skills, though he hadn't even figured it out himself," Keiko giggled.

"Oh really?" Raynes replied skeptically.

"Yeah, we taught Thinker and his very first recruits how to use sword skills," I boasted. At this point, the older man broke into unrestrained laughter. —He thinks we're lying. —Yup.

"Oh yeah? You two personally taught the _guild leader_ how to use sword skills. Because I'm supposed to believe an obvious lie like that?"

However, our conversation was interrupted when we entered the next cave, holding a variety of monsters. There were three large tortoises, a lizard, and another of those centipedes. They were scattered all around, so pulling one or two at a time wouldn't be a problem.

"We start with the lizard there," Raynes instructed, and we all edged along the right hand wall toward the lizard. It was gray, with a slight green color mixed in, and had one bar of hp. Right when we'd drawn aggro, Raynes said, "We'll do a 3-2 rotation." What was that? I had no idea what kind of instructions he was giving, but it was too late now. Halfway raised on its hind legs, the lizard rushed forward. It's long tongue darted out as everyone else fell away around us.

It took all of my reaction speed to arch my back, narrowly dodging the projectile-like tongue which shot narrowly over my head as I bent awkwardly backward. So far in fact, that I fell on my back soon after the attack receded. Another lash came within half a second, and I rolled sideways to dodge. Where was everyone else? The third attack was parried by Keiko, who stood in front of me, blocking a hail of strikes to allow me time to stand again.

We quickly retreated, scanning backward for our party. For whatever reason, they were almost seven meters behind us, all the way at the entrance to this cave opening. "What the hell are you two doing?" Raynes shouted. That's what we want to know! —But I couldn't shout that while fighting. We retreated while blocking the numerous incoming attacks, until we finally reached the unmoving line of our party.

Once there, the three shield men stepped forward, blocking incoming attacks while the back line spear men thrust their weapons into the raised torso of the lizard. Then, the front line sent a single attack into the lizard before backing off and dispersing to either side of the formation. Of course, that action allowed the lizard a free shot at the back line, which it took knocking both of the spear users off their feet, down to about three quarters hp.

"What are you doing?!" Raynes shouted at us.

"What are _you_ doing?!" we shouted back.

"It's a 3-2 rotation!"

"And what the hell is that?!" Our voices growing even louder as we continued shouting. In the meantime, the lizard sent a barrage of attacks at the vulnerable back line, reducing their hp by another quarter. Seeing this, both of our groups moved to block for them, but ran into each other, allowing the lizard to attack all of us instead. As I staggered back from the powerful blow to my chest, my hp decreased about thirty percent.

Glancing at the lizard's hp, it was at about seventy percent. If we killed it quickly, then we could finally get an answer about these formation tactic things Raynes kept talking about. Without warning, both Keiko and I shot forward together. Raising our swords as we made the short leap, we were already halfway through «Sonic Leap». Both blades came down straight through the lizard's head. It wouldn't be enough for a big monster like this, so we landed, already in position for our next Sword Skill. Kicking off, we extended our arms, both our swords and daggers landing hits with «Whirl». Without stopping, we also activated the dagger skill «Crescent» extending the spin to three times. With a total of sixteen attacks landing between the two of us the giant lizard instantly exploded into a massive light effect.

Still without a moment of hesitation, we both turned back and shouted, "Now tell us what the hell a 3-2 rotation is!"

(1) Japanese phrase 'dozo yoroshiku', said when meeting people for the first time. Generally means 'let's get along', 'pleased to meet you', 'we'll be in your care', etc.


	100. Chapter 95

**The End of a Bad Day, and Some New Skills**** Chapter 95**

We glared at Raynes, him glaring back at us. It stayed like that for a minute before he finally opened his mouth. "A 3-2 rotation refers to the way the frontline rotates. 3-2 means that three members take the front, then switch with the other two. It allows the party to deal more sustained damage while giving any injured members a chance to heal," he explained simply. So, it was just a «Switch» for multiple people.

"Couldn't you have explained that sooner?"

"You should have known already."

"Why would we know that? We're soloers."

"Then why are you in the army?"

"We're blacksmiths!" we both shouted together.

"Then why aren't you doing your job? Why are you here?"

"We already told you, Thinker sent us here," I growled. The deadlock continued there when no one had anything to say for a minute.

"Then, we're moving on. The centipede is next. Looking over, the rest of the party all held kind of anxious faces. They were obviously uncomfortable with this ridiculous fighting too. Why was he so... aggressive?

"3-2 rotation," Raynes said when we drew the centipede's attention. All backing off together this time, we left plenty of empty space to the tortoises before stopping to fight. Again, the back line stabbed while the front blocked. This left us standing in the middle between the two lines. The front moved up, getting an attack in against the centipede's huge body before backing off to avoid its counter. They spread out, one to each side and one in the middle, allowing us to move through the two gaps.

"Where are your shields?" Raynes asked angrily once we moved up past him.

"We don't have shields," I answered over my shoulder.

"Then how do you block?"

"We have an AGI build! We can't use shields."

"And what good is an AGI build?" Before our increasingly hostile conversation could move any further, the centipede collected itself after the last barrage of attacks. Releasing a 'waawaa" screeching sound, it reared upward, bringing the front of its body slamming down toward us. The attack was slow, giving ample time to dodge. However, I didn't know if they would dodge or not. If we moved away and allowed it to hit them, Raynes would never let us live it down. If we blocked and they moved out of the way, we would take a ton of damage.

"Ahh, hell." I raised my sword and dagger up, crossing them above me to block and widened my stance. With a glance, I saw everyone else had jumped out of the way! Shit! The thought ran through my head while I twisted, throwing myself right, low to the ground to avoid as best I could.

Somehow, I managed to move fast enough to avoid a direct hit. Numerous sharp spines coming from the centipede's skin raked against me in the process though, reducing my hp by almost half. Rolling backward and up to my feet, I reached into a pouch on my belt and pulled a potion, downing it in one go.

"Couldn't you have said something? Like 'oh no, everyone get out of the way!' You all just jumped without warning!"

"Because that's an instant kill attack. You should definitely be dead right now," Raynes pointed out.

"Well then thanks even more for not warning me!" I screamed. Oh man, this was dangerous... Because we couldn't get along, this was way more dangerous than it should be. Everyone formed up again during the long delay on the centipede's attack. Continuing with the same strategy as before, Raynes yelled at us the entire time for having an AGI build and no shields while we slowly cut down the centipede's hp. According to him, you couldn't stand at the front without a shield to block. Despite our constant bickering, the rest of the fight went smoothly, if slowly.

I swear, it took almost five minutes to kill the giant centipede. If Keiko and I just went wild, we could have killed it in a matter of seconds. Not to mention that we gained all of 53 exp from it. And that was after our «Exp Share» doubled it! Back during our forty hour grind, we probably gained that much exp in ten seconds or so. And it just took five minutes here? What was the point of this exactly? It's not like we were clearing a dungeon. We were just hunting normally, so why do it in such a terrible way?

Despite my problems with all of this, I kept quiet. It's just for one day, I kept telling myself as we slowly took down the tortoises one by one. It took close to forty-five minutes to clear this one section of cave before we could move on to the next. The situation remained unchanged while we fought through fifteen more areas just like it. By that point, it was 8:00 pm, when Raynes finally decided it was time to head back.

We all walked slowly, retracing our way through the caves we'd already cleared out. When we finally reached the exit, the sky dyed dark purple by the tiny rays of sunlight which still reached it. The moon was already fully visible between the floors when we came into the open air.

"Oh, I just got the message from Thinker introducing you two. He actually said you're incredibly strong. Hahaha," he laughed loudly.

Unable to take it anymore, but still unwilling to just scream at this guy, "We're going to go ahead," both of us said at the same time. Kicking off hard, we darted away so fast no one could even respond before we were long gone.

Getting back to the city and taking the «Teleport Gate» to the third floor's main town «Serof», we set up our shop where there weren't many people. Since we'd been hunting in the day, we'd have to use the night to begin training our new skills, «Tailoring» and «Cloth Refining». It had been a few weeks since listening to Heathcliff's description of just how it was done, but I thought I still got the gist of it.

First, we shot over to the crafting NPC, who sold all the basic cloth to get started with. It was so cheap, we just bought a ton of it and hauled it all back to our carpet. Before we got started, we ate some of the leftover bread still stored in our inventory from our long grind. Once fed, we got right to it, just messing around until we had things figured out.

The main important piece of equipment was the needle. After tapping the cloth, a drop-down menu appeared. On it, there was a list of all available things which could be made. I slowly read down the list.

『Hat』

『Helmet』

『Shirt』

『Pants』

『Shorts』

『Skirt』

『Socks』

『Shoes』

『Boots』

『Jacket』

『Coat』

『Gloves』

『Other』

When I tapped 『Other』 a new menu appeared above the first, allowing me to select the designated body part, all the way from fingers to thighs, to forearms. So many options...

To start out, we both just chose to make shirts. They were as simple as it got, right? Once I pressed the button, choosing to make a shirt, a small window appeared asking if I was sure. I hit 『Yes』 and a ten minute count down appeared in the bottom left corner of my vision. The time limit for creating the clothing. To start, I took the needle and poked it right into the middle of the piece of cloth lying on the carpet. When I pulled back, the fabric stretched out to follow, creating a strange cylindrical section coming from the flat piece.

"Woops," I giggled. Picking up the fabric and turning it all around, I kept playing with it, skewing the shape all over the place until the ten minute timer ran out. The finished product definitely couldn't be called a shirt, and I wasn't sure how it would even be possible to wear. No, it definitely couldn't be possible. So, I put it into my inventory and hit the button to delete it.

Now that I understood how to use the needle to manipulate the fabric, I used another throwaway piece to get a handle on how cutting with scissors and a knife worked. With my third piece, I used what I'd learned to make a basic t-shirt. It only took a couple minutes to create the simple shape, though overall it was still a bit warbley. I glanced over to see how Keiko was doing. She was more-or-less ok, also having made a shirt, though it looked a bit uneven, like one side was larger than the other.

We continued, moving down the list and making each item a few times until we could make them about right. When we reached gloves, the last item before the extra menu, we both worked at it for a while before getting it right. Gloves, with all five fingers, were definitely more difficult to make. Eventually we figured it out though, and each had a pair of gloves which could actually be worn. Although, we didn't have any dyes or anything, so all the stuff we made was a kind of gray color, like the basic cloth we'd bought.

That would have to come later, because by this point it was really late, almost midnight, and we rushed to pack up and head off to our inn for the night. Though I wasn't sure what we would be doing tomorrow, we'd have to keep practicing with our new skill later in the day. We'd gotten our «Tailoring» skill up to level 6, but that was hardly any advancement considering the crazy number points it would require to meet the level of our other skills. And we would need to level up the skill so we could make strong armor. That glancing blow had taken out nearly half of my health today. We weren't going to be able to last much longer without any armor.

Thinking these thoughts, I also couldn't help but wonder just what we would be doing tomorrow. Hopefully we'd get to work on clearing the dungeon.


	101. Chapter 96

**More Strife**** Chapter 96**

_Author Note: Thanks for the advice Tikkeus, I'm taking some of what you said into consideration in this chapter._

When we woke up the next day, we headed straight for the teleport gate to get back to The Army's base on the first floor. We planned to find some food once we'd gotten our orders for the day. It was pretty early, just a little after 6:00 am, so we would have the time before we headed out.

Arriving at the castle, we found it in its usual early morning bustle. Now that I thought about it, everyone else _did_ have uniforms... We'd just gotten «Tailoring», but we probably wouldn't be able to make ourselves good armor for some time, so we might want to ask for a set of those, they would certainly offer more defense than our beaten up leather vest and bracers. Hell, I'd be surprised if these things still offered any defensive stats at this point, I grumbled inwardly.

"Hey, are you two new around here?" a guy asked while approaching from behind. He put a hand on my left shoulder as he stepped in front of us, but reeled back as soon as he saw the strange black marks on our faces, quickly excusing himself with some vague claim. I could only sigh as we resumed our previous pace. At least these marks kept guys from hitting on us... well, after they saw our faces anyway.

Making a right turn, we entered the stairwell, and filed up amongst a number of other members. Truthfully, besides for the sword shaped guild mark next to our hp bars, there wasn't anything in particular identifying us as members of the army. Although, I still wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing...

Arriving at the third floor, we made a beeline through the various corridors until we reached Thinker's office. Outside, there stood two more soldier-looking guys, as if guarding his office. Well, this was new.

"Hey, are you new recruits?" the one on the left asked as we approached.

"No, we're just here to see Thinker-san," Keiko answered.

"Sorry, he's not in his office right now. We're keeping watch while he's out." Why would they have to watch his office? I wondered.

"Then, do you know where he is right now?"

"Out in the field with the new recruits."

"I see, thanks. We'll be going then," I gave a short wave while we turned away and headed back toward the stairs. It had been a while since we got new recruits, and I couldn't really remember how to get to the courtyard, which the regular members generally used for practice in their down time. We'd never had need of it, and hadn't really gone there before. It wasn't a problem, since there were still plenty of other members around.

Once we landed back on the first floor, we asked a guy for directions. "Head that way and make a left, then keep going until you see an exit on your left." We said a quick thanks before we continued on. A little ways up the hall, the same man shouted, "Hurry it up, you're already late!" We waved, as if to say, 'no problem', and kept walking. We still had plenty of time. It wasn't even 6:30 yet, and everyone would probably get help up by the new recruits ceremony anyway.

Making the turns as we'd been instructed, we entered the courtyard. Glancing around, I could see that the new recruits were all assembled in the middle of the yard, taking most of the area. Wow, there sure were a lot of them... Standing in generally neat rows, I counted seven by eleven, meaning about eighty people? Jeez, who' managed to recruit all these people? And where did they dig them up from anyway? Actually, when I looked closer, I noticed how not all of them were in starter clothes. Some were actually in combat gear already. That must mean the army had started gaining members who had already decided to move forward.

Standing all around the assembled recruits were current members, all identifiable by their standard armor of course. Looking around, I finally found Thinker. However, he wasn't in any position to talk to us right now. He was at the head of the assembly, standing on what looked like a table from where I was, speaking to the new recruits. Something about helping those poorer than themselves.

—I guess we should eat first, kill some time before the ceremony ends, I thought toward Keiko. She nodded, and we both turned around, only to be caught by the two men standing closest to the door.

"Where are you going?" one asked, though I couldn't really figure out his tone.

"We're going to go eat," I answered, confused. Why did some random guy care anyway?

"No way, you can't leave until the ceremony is over and you've been sorted."

"What's that supposed to mean?" we both asked together.

"If you'd gotten here on time, you'd already know, now get going." Normally, it shouldn't be possible to push someone else against their will inside a city. However, we were so confused at this point, we allowed the two men to push us over behind the group of recruits. At this point, we both sighed together. Nothing to do but wait now. Surely, all this strangeness would be explained once the ceremony ended. We'd have to eat quickly before heading out, given the time we would lose waiting here.

Thinker continued telling the recruits about guild responsibilities, such as following orders of their guild leader and more experienced members and whatnot, as well as how they should conduct themselves not to tarnish the MTD's reputation. His instructions went on for a little while longer, before he finished and stepped aside. Another few members, obviously high level, given their newer looking armor.

One man in heavy armor stepped up on the table, which released a groan in complaint. "Ok, now we'll assign captains based on level. Everyone file forward, starting with the front row and moving across the rows right to left, starting at the front-right."

While the recruits began walking as instructed, Keiko pointed past them. "Look, Thinker isn't doing anything. We could probably talk to him now." I followed her gaze to the guild leader, currently standing off to the side, and nodded. Then, we swung to the right side of the recruits, walking in the narrow path between them and the regular members. Without warning, hands pushed us hard from the side, along with a whole bunch of voices speaking over each other so I couldn't tell what any of them said. It was enough for the «Crime Prevention System» to block, but create a knockback effect, sending us stumbling sideways and knocking into a few of the recruits.

Before we could apologize, more hands started pushing from every side, from every which way, as we got swept up in the crowd of recruits. We kept getting pushed this way and that without any way of getting out past all of them, until we somehow ended up getting pushed right out. Staggering for a few moments, we looked around in confusion. Which side had we come out on? Glancing around, I couldn't see Thinker, so maybe we'd come out the back again.

"Hellooo? Anyone there?" said someone in front of us. But for some reason, it felt like he was talking _to_ us.

"Huh?" I said toward the man. He was dressed in medium armor and definitely looking straight at us.

"What level are you?" he asked with an irritated tone.

"Why would we tell you?" Keiko scoffed. I frowned along with her. It was incredibly rude to ask someone you don't know about their stats.

"What are you doing here then?" he threw his hands up in an exasperated gesture.

"We just want to talk to Thinker-san!" we both said together, aggravated ourselves at this point. Looking around, I still couldn't see him anywhere. I did notice that everyone else present was all looking at us though.

"Then you can see him once you tell me your level," the man offered, though he still had a 'this is ridiculous' tone of voice.

"Fine, if it'll get you to stop bothering us," I sighed.

"We're both level twenty-five," we said together.

"..."

"Now can you tell us where Thinker-san is?" I prodded him.

"..."

"Hello?"

"Do you actually expect me to believe that?" he asked angrily.

"I don't care what you believe. We told you our levels, so tell us where Thinker-san went," Keiko fumed. He must have left the ceremony for some reason. If he was still here, he'd have intervened, given that we'd managed to attract the attention of everyone present.

"That's it, get these two out of here!"

…

"I'm really sorry about all that," Thinker apologized a few minutes later. After the incident in the courtyard, they'd had higher and higher ranked members try to revoke our guild membership, only to find no one was able to do so. They ignored the fact that such a thing meant we were their seniors, all claiming that we were obviously new recruits. Finally, they settled with throwing us out the front entrance of the castle. After shouting curses at them all for a few minutes, we scaled straight up the side of the castle and jumped in a window, storming straight through the guards at the door and into Thinker's office.

"I didn't know you two were here, and I got called away on some other business after I said my piece during the ceremony," he explained. "I'm sorry everyone caused you so much trouble. I'll make sure to get two sets of armor sent to you so it won't happen again," he bowed while saying the last part.

It was right then that the main force of soldiers arrived, (following the news that we'd broken into the guild leader's office no doubt) bursting in the door behind us, weapons drawn even through we were in an 『Inner Area』. Unafraid of their useless weapons, we stood with our arms crossed, ensuring that they would be unable to move us from where we stood.

Over all the shouting that followed, it took Thinker's quiet voice a minute or two to prevail and calm everyone down until they could hear him. "Stand down, none of you know who these two are, do you?" he said with a stern voice. He really was such a passive person, it was the closest to angry I'd heard him get. "These two are my seconds in command and founders of this guild- not to mention the strongest members we have," he claimed. Though everyone was totally shocked by this, ourselves included, part of me also wondered, there can be two people as 'second in command'?

Whatever the case, his bold statement was met with many boggled stares and confusion. He used the opportunity to force everyone out of his office again, closing the door behind them and leaning against it. Standing there, he let out a long sigh and slid to the floor. "So, what were you here to talk about anyway?"

We couldn't help but sigh as well. "We were really just here to get our orders for today," I said.

"Ah, that. You'll be going with Raynes' party again."

"Eh?" I stopped dead. We'd gone along with that farce yesterday because Thinker had asked us to, but I had no intention of putting up with that man again. "Couldn't we do something else? Or go with _any_ other group?"

"What's wrong with Raynes' group? I was under the impression that they were very strong and capable."

"Well..." I wasn't sure if I should bring such things as 'he's a jerk' to Thinker. That was more of a personal matter.

"The thing is, he has the party fight in a defensive formation, so it takes way too long to kill monsters. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how they made it to frontline levels fighting like that," Keiko pointed out.

"Ah..." Thinker thought for a minute after Keiko explained the more... reasonable, problem we had with him. "Well, he asked me not to tell you, but considering the trouble you've been through on my account today, I'll let you know anyway."

After a brief pause, Thinker continued, "Raynes actually requested you two join him again today. Personally."


	102. Chapter 97

**Not Exactly a Good Second Start**** Chapter 97**

"No way." Those were the first words out of both our mouths after Thinker claimed Raynes had asked for us to come with him.

Blinking confusedly, Thinker asked, "Why is that?"

"Because he hates us," I said before I could stop myself. So much for leaving personal matters out of this.

"Really? He didn't give any indication of such a thing when we were speaking. What makes you think that?" Thinker asked, tilting his head slightly.

"Well, just that he spent all day yesterday yelling at us about anything he could yell about. Our lack of uniforms and shields were two of the things I remember," Keiko said while thinking carefully to pull up the two examples.

"I see... You won't be going with him then?"

"Well..." We both looked at each other, thinking the same thing. "It seems like there's more to him than he's letting on. If he just plainly hated us, he'd probably never want to see us again. We're kind of... curious... now." I tried explaining.

"There are a few things I can think of now, but I'll hold off saying anything. We will go with him. We'll try to find out what he's up to, and report back later, ok?"

His face having grown serious while he also realized the strangeness of all this, Thinker nodded. "Wait, wait, there was one more thing I wanted to know," I sputtered when it popped into my head again.

Raising an eyebrow, "Go on..." inclining his head.

"There were guards posted outside your office today, which is a first. "I was wondering about the reason."

"Oh, that? One of the other frontline parties found a particularly rare item, though it can't be stored inside a player's inventory. So, it's been under guard in my office until we can sell it."

"Ooh, ok. That makes sense then," I nodded at his explanation. Although, the only item I knew of which couldn't be stored in the inventory was the «Vendor's Carpet». Still, it didn't really concern us, so I let it pass and asked where we would be meeting Raynes. Thinker said we'd go meet the party in the main plaza of the seventh floor's main town «Finreo». The meeting time was 7:00 am.

Of course it was. That gave us _four minutes_ to eat and get there. So much for a normal meal, it would be more like eat-and-run now. Saying as much, we totally skipped the goodbyes and rushed back out of the office. Down the stairs, through the crowded castle and out into the city, we stopped just long enough to buy some hard bread from a street-side merchant NPC before we kept on our way to the «Teleport Gate». Without even enough time to stash the few day's worth of bread in our inventory, we ran into the plaza. Dashing straight through the haze between the strange metal arches, we shouted "Teleport: Finreo!"

The teleport effect wrapped around us as we moved, silently transporting us a great distance in an instant. Without even blinking, the entire scene in front of my eyes changed, from the low level «Starting City» to the highest floor currently available. Of course, there were a number of things I should have realized right about when we went through the gate. First of all, it's really not a good idea to run through a teleport gate. Second, especially while carrying stuff. And third, even more so when it's _me_ carrying stuff.

Needless to say, as the moment we landed on the seventh floor, I ran into the back of a guy in chainmail armor. I spun full around, losing my balance as I fought to stay upright, without any of the rolls falling from my grasp. Staggering, I swung all over the place, continuing to trip over myself and others in an attempt to keep from dropping the bread. Finally, I staggered sideways, my leg catching against the side of the fountain at the center of the plaza. I leaned far over one one foot, but managed to use the wall to stop myself before falling in.

"_Saaaaffffeeee_..." I let out the long English word as I maintained my precarious balance without falling.

"Why are you late?" When a heavy hand slapped my shoulder from behind, I could only think, Oh damn it...

"Uwwaaaa!" that shout came out automatically as I went full over sideways, flailing my arms and flinging all the bread into the air as I fell straight into the fountain with a loud splash. In the next moment, I flailed around, kicking myself back up to the surface. "Cold!" It was still the middle of winter, and this floor was probably the coldest to date, so the water in the fountain was freezing.

Just as laughter started erupting all around, one piece of the bread I'd thrown came back down, smacking right into the center of my forehead. "Ow!" I gasped as the hard roll bounced off, sending me staggering backward through the water as it shattered into blue polygons in midair. Of course it was my luck that a second followed, hitting me right in the same spot. Then a third. Then a fourth. At that point, I fell back into the water again just to keep any more bread from hitting me in the face. Swimming underwater back to the edge of the fountain, I finally came up again, to a massive chorus of laughter.

"Yeah yeah yeah..." I muttered, annoyed now. I stepped back out of the fountain, already shivering from the cold. My clothes were all soaked through. While standing there and shivering badly, I swiped my hand down to open my menu and switched to our inventory. We still had some random spare clothes from what we'd made before. I was too cold to even care about the moment I would be in just my underwear when changing, and flicked a number of them over to equip them. We'd trashed all the ones there weren't really wearable, so at least I knew I would get clothes, though just what they would look like was another matter.

After the moment it took to switch clothes, the bitter cold kept in by the water disappeared, and I let out a relieved sigh. I was still chilled right through, but at least I could warm up again now.

"What are you wearing?" came a familiar always-condescending voice. I turned to face Raynes, who was standing close by, eying my temporary outfit with a look of disgust. "Where do you even find clothes like that?"

"Well I'm sorry that my random spare clothes don't look good-"

"It's not that," Keiko whispered from close by on my left. She continued, sending the thought through our bond. —It's your skirt. Oh god, what was wrong? I glanced down, to see that when we'd made it, we'd formed it lopsided, so that the right side was much shorter, nowhere near long enough to cover my underwear. Flashing through the menu again, I put on a pair of pants this time and released a long sigh. Then I deleted that particular skirt.

"Well, if you're done fooling around, can we get down to business?" Raynes growled.

"It's your fault I fell into that fountain!" I spun around and snapped at him. "We need to eat too, since you _also_ made me drop all the bread we bought!" He returned my glare, hesitating for a moment.

"You shouldn't have been running in a crowded place," he replied. I had a number of things I could say to that, but I stopped, turning and walking away, Keiko coming into step beside me.

"We'll be back in a few minutes," I called without looking back.

"We're leaving now."

"Go right ahead," waving dismissively back at him.


	103. Chapter 98

**The Unreasonable Reasoning of an Unreasonable Adult**** Chapter 98**

_Author Note: I've been thinking of changing the title of the story, since this has come a long way past 'it's a death game? Orly?' Any suggestions for a new name? Or would you rather I keep it the same?_

We bought food from the first place we came across and ate without speaking. It only took a minute to finish and get back to the plaza. As promised, Raynes had begun walking with the rest of the party toward the caves. However, he was going at such a dawdling pace, that he hadn't even made it out of the plaza yet. What was this guy up to, really? We both took a few deep breaths to ready ourselves. Remember, we're here to find out what he's up to, I reminded myself. Whatever ridiculous abuse he threw our way, it was definitely just to try and cover up whatever he was really after.

Picking up our pace, we caught up with the group practically before they left the town square. Raynes immediately went off on us, but meeting no sort of resistance, quickly ran out of insults. After that point, the rest of the walk across the plain was quiet all the way to the caves. As we walked, Keiko and I kept shooting thoughts back and forth as to what Raynes might be up to. Currently, our best working theory was that, despite everything he said, he realized we really were strong, and intended to use that to his advantage. Since this cave functioned as a dungeon, the probability of there being a boss at the end was good. That would probably be his reason.

Beside that theory, the second was that he actually took pleasure in insulting us, and had merely requested we join his party again so he could continue to do so. Probably not likely. Besides hating us, he seemed to get along well with the rest of his men. He didn't seem to be a particularly bad person, it really felt like he just hated _us_. Apart from those two possibilities, we couldn't manage to come up with much else. Any possible ideas were quickly shot down by the other, who always came up with an explanation for why that just could not be.

So, with one working theory, and one 'he's just a masochist', we entered the cave dungeon to find out which it was, if either. Working our way through all the areas we'd already emptied of monsters, we quickly delved deep into the dank cave. As we continued deeper, with all external light being cut off, the walls began to glow with their own faint blueish color, offering illumination from all sides. Eventually, we reached a cave we hadn't cleared, and just like yesterday, slowly chipped away at the mobs, until they were all beaten. For a number of hours, we continued clearing the cave, slowly moving from one area to the next.

We had gone through upward of fifteen more caves when we broke for lunch. Even though noon was already two hours behind us. Checking my stats in the meantime, I saw that we hadn't even begun to put a scratch in the massive exp requirement for leveling up again. I can't say I was surprised, since all the kills were split seven ways. Soloing really had its advantages. On the other hand, our «Battle Healing» was increasing faster now, since we regularly had to block and weren't able to dodge, since that would just let the monsters hit the back line. Of course that meant we were taking more damage, but nothing dangerous so far. If we really got nothing else out of this, at least it was an opportunity to train our «Battle Healing».

During the short break, we ate some extra bread we'd bought, having anticipated a lunch break at some point. Then, we all got up and continued going. The entire time, Raynes continued to berate us for any mistake, any damage taken, a misstep, and regularly when it was someone else who did something wrong. Hell, one time he even got stabbed in the chest by a giant spider's long, hooked leg and blamed us for not jumping in the way to take the attack for him. We endured all this for hours and hours, trying to discern some sort of motivation from it all.

And then, after finishing one cave, we moved into the small, tightly twisting passage between two of the wide openings. Walking through the short path, we emerged in the next cave opening. However, this one was different than the others, because it was totally empty. The first thought that we all came up with was that the path had turned back on itself. There were plenty of places for it to do just that. However, a quick glance at the map proved this wrong, since we could clearly make out the entire path we'd taken to get here.

"So, it's a dead end?" one of the spear wielders asked.

"That can't be right. The path didn't split anywhere," another member pointed out.

"There were three different paths at the beginning though. Maybe they all head in different directions?" Keiko pointed out.

"Hold on everyone, I have «Searching». There might be a hidden door in here." The previously silent spear-man said. He proceeded to walk around the cave, apparently examining the cave wall. I'd never really looked into how «Searching» worked, but apparently it could find hidden doors? Moving to about halfway around the chamber, he suddenly stuck his hand into the air waving us all over while shouting, "I found it!" Of course we all rushed over and he quickly triggered a mechanism hidden along the rocky wall.

That section of wall slowly slid open, allowing our party through into the next room. I guess «Searching» was a useful skill. We'd have to get it at some point. After moving through the narrow passageway, the area widened again and we all spread out into the new open area. Looking around, it seemed that the walls here were more green than blue, with some kind of white vines down from above, snaking along the walls like fancy decorations. Of course, everyone who wasn't standing in the back and had a better view were interested in something other than the walls. When I managed to get a peek around them, I caught a glimpse of something great. A treasure chest.

"Awesome, we finally found it." While everyone was circling the chest and congratulating each other, I was confused by the first comment.

"What do you mean 'finally'?" I asked aloud.

"These caves end with a treasure chest, though some are hidden in secret rooms. We found out from the frontliners who got here first. Apparently, they have pretty powerful loot items." The heavily armored man standing to the right side of the chest explained.

"What, you didn't even know that?" Raynes commented. So, these caves ended with a reward chest, not a boss. That totally killed our first and, well, only idea as to Raynes' motivation. Besides him just really hating us.

"Hehehe, let's see what's in here. Just cross your fingers and hope it isn't one of the trapped ones, the man crouched down in front of the chest said.

"It's trapped?!" I shouted, jerking back. Everyone else's eyes moved to me when I said that. Everyone except the one opening the chest. My eyes went wide as the lid opened with a _chack_.

The next thing I saw was a large, metal chest plate in front of me.

**_B_B_B_B_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_M_M_M_M_M_M**

Slowly, I managed to open my eyes. What just happened? Oh, wait, didn't we open a trapped treasure chest? Please, I really hope I didn't die in such a stupid way... With these thoughts sluggishly moving through my mind, I blinked my eyes twice before glancing into the corner of my vision. My hp was a little blow half, though at the rate it was increasing, I'd probably been knocked a lot lower. Struggling for a moment, I realized I couldn't move. The rocky ground was pushing sharply into my back, the pain making me grit my teeth and try not to move too much.

Finally, I realized the problem. There was a person in heavy armor lying on top of me. I leaned my head back to see that it was Raynes! Did he just block the explosion for me? Scratch that, it was _us_. Keiko was still right at my side, even underneath this ridiculously large man. "Oi! Raynes, get off of us!" I shouted as best I could with my lungs being crushed.

"Rurughrugh" he let out a garbled mumble and rolled sideways, his spiked shoulder plate digging cleanly into my breast as he got off.

"Ow, ow, ow," I winced. Did he really have to do that? Slowly standing again, I rubbed the new sore spot while I looked around, surveying the destruction. According to the party menu, that massive blast had taken out two of our party, the other survivors(besides us) being moderately to severely injured. I glanced around to find the worst one and poured a potion down his throat, just in case. Standing again, I limped over to Keiko, who was sitting up herself. Despite no physical indications of damage, my left leg must have taken a serious hit from that blast, because it was taking a while for the pain to subside.

After Keiko was on her feet again, everyone else else followed on their own soon after. Of course, the survivors merely needed to dust themselves off, not being able to feel pain and all. With our five remaining members, we all headed for the path ahead. Judging by the bright red light visible along the walls and floor, it led outside, where the sky would currently be the color of sunset.

"Well that was a disaster," the single spear-man noted.

Nodding, Raynes asked, "How did you know it was trapped anyway?" Reaching the exit, we reached an area with ice overhead. That must be what let the light through. So maybe it wasn't an exit? A little ways past that, we found a trapdoor leading upward. Ok, it's an exit after all, I concluded. We pushed up through the door, returning to floor level before I opened my mouth to answer.

"I don't know, I just kind of knew somehow," with him, it would be better to keep my answer vague and not give him anything to chew me out over. Hell, if I told him I knew any chest we opened would be trapped, he'd probably try to pin the deaths of both our party members on me. I was _so_ not getting into that fight right now. I still hadn't really sunk in that they were gone. Dead.

"There is actually something I wanted to know too," Keiko pointedly, pulling me from my thoughts. "Why did you save us?"

"Save you?" Raynes asked, as if he was unsure of what she meant.

"Yeah, you saved our lives by blocking that blast. Why would you, who hates us so much, go so far to save our lives. Especially when it means giving up the chance to save someone else? Someone you don't hate?"

"You were the closest ones, there was no real reason besides that."

"Oh come on," I cried when he answered, "that can't be all. Thinker-san told us you _requested_ for us to join your party."

"It's just that you're women. It's nice to have eye candy around," he puffed up his chest and crossed his arms as he answered.

"Seriously? Eye candy? Coming from the one who pointed out that my skirt was too short?" I shot back. We'd gone through all these possibilities already. —If we can keep him talking, we might be able to get the truth out of him, I thought toward Keiko. Our eyes met for a moment and she sent me back a mental nod.

"You two have the least amount of armor, so you were the most likely to die." He reasoned. "Is there something wrong with keeping your party members alive?"

"No, certainly not. However," Keiko countered, "we were the farthest from the trap, meaning that depending on the type of trap, the ones closer had a higher chance of dying. Why not save them?"

Finally, Raynes grit his teeth angrily. "You really want to know the reason? Why you're here? Why I saved you instead of them? It's because you're weak!" Taken aback, we both did a double-take at his completely unexpected declaration.

"C,come again?" we both muttered together, as if we were unsure of what we'd just heard.

"You are weak. You are naïve. You're just too young. Not to mention that you are _women_." At this point, we just listened with our jaws on the ground. "Back in the real world, I was a middle school teacher. I dealt with little kids like you every day. You all think you know how the world works, but you have no idea. You think you know everything, and it's _my_ job to show you that you're wrong. How could some little girls possibly think they stand on a level playing field with a grown man like myself?" He stopped for a minute, as we slowly absorbed everything he just said. During this time, the only sound was of our feet crunching through the light snow on the ground. However, before we could come up with any sort of response, he went on.

As if in a rush, Raynes released a torrent of forceful words. "When I first saw you two, you couldn't even get into a formation correctly, and you hardly boost your Sword Skills. I realized I had to protect you. From yourselves. If you had gone on your own, without _adult supervision_, you definitely wouldn't have lasted _a day_. That's why we've been fighting in such a defensive formation, to keep you alive. Children don't belong out here. You never should have left the «Starting City». You should have left this up to us _adults_." Apparently finished, Raynes was panting slightly, staring sideways at us while we all walked slowly toward the town. For a few minutes, we continued in absolute silence. In such silence it felt like the light snow was crunching so loud it would draw monsters from far off.

When we had just a minute or two left before we reached the 『Inner Area』, I finally thought of a plan. —Do you want to or should I? I asked, allowing the details of my idea to reach Keiko. —Definitely me, he insulted me as a woman, she responded.

Both stopping dead in our tracks, it took a moment for everyone else to come to a halt, a step or two further. After a moment of standing with our heads lowered, Keiko looked up angrily.

"Duel me!"

_Note: Editted a bit of Raynes' speech._


	104. Chapter 99

**Overwhelming Power**** Chapter 99**

"You? Duel me?" were the first words out of Raynes' mouth.

Ignoring him, Keiko explained. "Don't get me wrong, you aren't wrong for wanting to protect children. However. We are not the children you need to protect. We're actually much, much stronger than you."

"How could you possibly be stronger than me? What are you, thirteen?"

"Fourteen," she responded pointedly. In all honesty it sounded kind of funny, considering that a fourteen years was hardly old at all.

"Hehe," he chuckled in response. "So, you, a fourteen year old girl who doesn't know anything- obvious considering your complete lack of armor," he noted, "think you can beat me, a thirty seven year old man, who knows exactly what he's doing? You know what? You are as thoughtless as my daughter. Believe it or not, that's how I got trapped in this game. My thirteen year old daughter got the game from a friend who would be out of town on opening day. Did she ever wonder if she was old enough to play? No. Telling her as much. I began playing to check if it was _child friendly._ Do _you_ think this game is child friendly?" by the end, he was practically laughing. That was... absolutely ridiculous. Getting trapped here because he was checking if it was safe for someone else? I guess he got his answer... Well, at least his daughter dodged a bullet there, I thought.

"No matter how you got here, or what your intentions are, you are going about it all wrong. You shouldn't look down on those you try to protect."

"And why shouldn't I? I'm the adult, it's my privilege. I get to look down on all the little children with no idea what they're doing, because I already went through it!"

"Heehh," sighing, Keiko shook her head slowly. "You just don't understand. I don't know if there is even a way to convince you. Being young, there are lots of things I still don't know. But, what I do know, is that you chose the wrong people to force your 'protection' on." Raynes just grinned as she said that. "That's why, I'm going to completely crush you."

"Yes, I know how all you kids are good at boasting," he commented.

"It's not a boast, it's a warning," Keiko explained while opening the duel menu from Raynes' cursor. The challenge appeared in front of him, but Keiko wasn't done speaking. "I'm warning you, because I want to teach you a lesson. However, going so far, I don't know if I'll _kill you in the process_."

"Kill me? Do you even realize that the duel you sent is a «First Strike» duel? Are you really so deluded with your own strength that you think you could kill me in one blow? Can you even land one?" Raynes could hardly contain his laughter as he spoke.

At this point, Keiko simply stood quietly for a moment. Then, "Two things. First, drink a health potion before the match begins."

"Really?" he stared at her deadly serious face for a moment before patronizingly responding, "Alright alright. I also know that little girls _always_ have to have things their way." With a sarcastic smile, he asked, "So what's the other thing?"

"The other thing is, I need, you, to lend me your sword," turning to speak to the remaining straight sword user among the party. Of course, they were all staring, transfixed by this crazy situation, so Keiko had to walk over and take it out of the sheathe herself to get his attention. He quickly transferred the blade to her, at which point she made a low comment. "So light..."

"And why do you need another sword? Is your weapon as bad as your armor?" Raynes jokingly prodded.

Looking back his way, Keiko replied darkly, "Because if I used my own sword, there is absolutely no chance that you would survive." That comment finally got through Raynes' joking attitude, shown by the subtle shift on his face letting me know he wondered if she wasn't lying, though it only lasted for a moment.

"Haha, you really are serious, aren't you?" back in his patronizing tone. "You actually think you are _soooo_ strong that you might kill me?"

This time, I spoke up. "Hey, you must have not been at the «Black Iron Castle» this morning, were you?

"No, I was waiting for you, because you were late," he replied pointedly.

"I didn't think so," was all I had to say.

"Why?" a curious expression crossed his face, but I just shook my head. As I'd thought, he'd missed the whole fiasco this morning. Shrugging it off, he turned back to Keiko, who was slowly stepping into place about five meters away from. "Are you ready yet, _princess_?"

"As soon as you drink that health pot," she answered with sharp words.

"Don't complain after I beat you," he said, in that kind of fatherly 'don't do bad things' tone. Then he drank down the potion. The effect would outlast the duel, starting to mitigate the damage once Keiko hit him. Hopefully it would be enough to keep him in this world. As soon as he was done drinking, he pressed the green acceptance button in the duel window before him. A large sign overhead appeared, announcing that the duel was starting. In actuality, neither of us had ever been in a duel before. Of course, it wouldn't matter, since I could already imagine exactly how this one would play out. The only question mark was whether Raynes had enough hp and armor to survive.

A sixty second timer appeared underneath the duel sign. It counted down slowly, each second until the duel would begin. Despite not being inside the city, we were still close enough for the large duel sign to be seen. As always, it attracted a crowd, though they all kept a pretty wide distance, seeing how we were outside the city boundaries, making this duel very unusual.

The thing is, everyone went into the city before starting a duel. If a «First Strike» or «Half Health» duel went unfavorably, it could turn into an actual fight, maybe even ending in a death if it wasn't stopped.

Of course, part of it could also be that we were all members of the army, which mainly operated on the first floor, and until recently, no higher than the third. And then here we were, on the fronline. Army members on a floor where they'd never been seen before, having a duel outside the 『Inner Area』, that would be enough to have everyone keep a very, very far distance away.

As I noticed all this, the duel timer continued counting down. Raynes drew his mace and kit shield from his back, a wide grin still plastered across his face. He really, really didn't see what was coming at all, did he? I thought, almost feeling sorry for him, except that I didn't, he totally deserved it.

After that, I quieted my mind, not wanting to disturb Keiko. As the counter continued, she stood dead still, holding the sheathed sword vertically in front of her, one hand holding the sheath, and one on the sword's handle. With her eyes closed, she was focusing with everything she had. Telling herself, with the strength in her one arm, she would cut right through him. She would reduce his health to almost nothing, without killing him. As that thought repeated, over and over, growing strong and solid like a concrete fact in her mind, she opened her eyes. Just a few more seconds.

When the timer reached four seconds remaining until the duel, Keiko slowly drew the sword from its sheath, waving the whole sword in a slow, wide, counter-clockwise arc in front of her. Bringing the blade down into position for our strongest Sword Skill, all her concentration moved into her blade. Keeping my mind dead blank, I would not do anything to distract her now.

Holding the sword across her body, out from her left hip, Keiko hesitated as the attack charged, and the timer clicked down it's last moments. Grinning broadly, Raynes planted his feet and brought his kite shield up to block, crossing his mace over top as well. Normally, in such a position, her attack would bounce off and he would easily be able to hit her during the delay. Of course, he'd never fought _us_ before.

"**Flash**-!" The timer hit zero. The duel started. Raynes hunched into a slightly low position. All at once, these happened. And then Keiko was on the other side, behind Raynes.

"**DRAW**!"

A chorus of shattering glass. I blinked three times. Thankfully, Raynes hadn't died. However, I couldn't help but grin when I saw his mace, his kite shield, and all the plate armor on the upper half of his body shatter into polygons of blue light. Behind him, the sword Keiko had borrowed shattered as well.

"I guess a regular sword can't take that much force..." Keiko muttered far enough away I could only hear what it was through our bond.

For a few seconds, Raynes stood there, as if he didn't understand what had just happened. Slowly, his hp fell, and fell, and kept falling, until it hit about fifteen percent before it began to rise again form the potion's effects. My guess was about eighty eight percent of his total health in damage, considering how much the potion would heal while his hp dropped.

Slowly, he turned around to face Keiko. "This is... impossible..."

"I told you, didn't I? We really are a lot stronger than we look. You don't have to protect us, find someone else to protect. And really, would it kill you to be nice to them?" As we both turned to leave, Keiko sent a friend request to the guy who's sword she just broke, saying, "Sorry, I'll make you a better one later." With that, we walked right off, back toward the city. First, we'd probably go tell Thinker about everything that happened. Not sure what came after that, maybe making the sword or working to level up our «Tailoring» some more. Whatever it was, at least we'd dealt with all this.

"Huh, there really are all kinds of people in the world, aren't there?" Keiko commented.

"Yeah," I nodded along, "there sure are."


	105. Chapter 100

**Clearing Again**** Chapter 100**

_Author Note: Chapter 100 is here! It isn't really anything special though... orz_

Following the debacle with Raynes, we got reassigned to a more normal party and sent to the frontlines to clear the newly opened dungeon. Of course, we still had the issue of springing every single trap in the place, so it required... special care. Meaning, we would run like maniacs through all the dungeon floors ahead of the main clearing group, which would actually deal with the mobs and whatnot.

Of course, the traps were a whole lot more scary, since the last time we'd done this was on the second floor. We weren't really getting any exp, since any mobs that died, died to the traps and not us, but we did still get all the drops, until we ran out of room in our inventory anyway. At that point they just fell all over the ground behind us. Not that we could go back into the crazy death zone full of exploding traps to get them anyway. At least it gave us a way to level our sprint skill, I guess.

After the half a day it took us to clear all fifteen floors' traps, we met with our party again, the leader a guy named Kains. His name already showed near his cursor, so we must have met him somewhere before, though I really couldn't remember. Whatever the case, he was a kind of bossy guy, and really straightforward. At least he had us fight normally and didn't insult us or anything. Now with our party, we got to clearing for the rest of the day.

We did the same for the next few days that followed, until finally reaching the boss room (which we'd actually ran right up to while clearing traps) on the Seventh of February. At that point, the frontliners all met up, apparently two days of scouting battles being the norm up to this point. It turned out that Asuna, in a newer looking dark green cloak, this one with a little bit of detailing around the bottom hem, was apparently one of the leaders of the clearing group. She went around, splitting everyone up into two groups. We were put into the second group, so we would run a scouting battle the second day.

Apart from her, there was a guy named Kibaou, though I couldn't really recall him very well. He did give off some very bad vibes though. Kirito was there too, and despite his obvious strength, he acted just like the other regular frontliners, simply allowing Asuna to shuffle him into one of the groups. Group one would be led by Kibaou, and group two by Asuna. It didn't take a genius to see that they didn't get along. It was pretty late by the time the meeting ended, though everyone hung around talking afterward.

Looking around, I suddenly realized something. Walking over to Asuna, who was exchanging a few words with Kirito, something about not slacking off I think, I got her attention while Kirito started to head off with a wave.

"Asuna-san, I just thought of something. Where's Diabel-san?" I asked. He was one of the strongest frontliners, but I hadn't seen him for the longest time. Surely he hadn't fallen behind, right? However, at my words, Asuna's eyes suddenly widened, and Kirito spun around, staring like he was in shock. "W,what?" I asked nervously. What was wrong? Had he done something?

"You don't know yet? How..." Asuna spoke quietly. Stepping back up to us, Kirito took a long breath and gulped a few times.

"Diabel died back during the first floor boss raid." After he said those words, he tried to stand firm, though I could see him trembling.

"But, how? He was so strong!" Keiko gasped.

"He got caught in the boss' special combo attack," Asuna explained, looking at the floor. "There was nothing we could do, he died before we could help him."

"You're telling me he's not just dead, that he's been dead, for _two months_?" I mumbled. They both nodded slowly.

"I'm really sorry that you're only finding this out now," Asuna offered.

"I,it's ok, it's not really your fault or anything..." Keiko said slowly. At that point, Kirito turned, a dark look on his face, and slowly began walking away from the plaza.

"See you guys at the raid," he muttered back to us. He was in Kibaou's scouting group, so he would be in the other scouting battle.

Walking back toward the «Teleport Gate», it took a minute to get over the shock of what we'd just heard. Even someone as strong as Diabel had died. We warped over to the second floor to get some sleep. With the first scouting battle running tomorrow, we'd probably just use the day to train our crafting skills. I don't know if we could manage any more than that right now...

_ Author's Note: 59 chapters after they see him last, they finally find out Diabel died._


	106. Chapter 101

**An Unexpectedly Interesting Day Off**** Chapter 101**

_Author Note: Oops, I screwed up back in chapter 92 when I said they could make metal armor to use until they got tailoring high enough. If that were the case, they would have done it. -_-; All armor requires the tailoring skill. (In my story anyway.) I've fixed that now._

On our free day, we worked on our crafting skills as planned, Keiko smithing and me tailoring. Of course, I couldn't keep from thinking about Diabel for most of the time as well. We managed to raise «Tailoring» to level 36 by the end of the day, though it still wasn't enough to make any sort of decent armor. On the other hand, I was actually getting really good at forming things evenly. We still didn't have any dyes or anything; I made a couple different things that I may have actually worn, had they been colored instead of that oddly grayish white of the slightly higher level cloth I was using.

Luckily for us, sometime in the late afternoon, a member of the army arrived with the armor Thinker had promised. It was regular, standard uniform army attire, but the stats weren't really terrible. Though, at our current rate, we would be able to make better in a week or two.

"So, you make the sword for that guy who's sword you broke?" I asked. Though we'd added him to our friend list, I hadn't actually gotten a look at his name.

"Ahh, no, I've been waiting actually. For some reason, I feel like I can't really forge a good sword if we don't both do it together..."

"Hehe, I know what you mean," I commented. It was the same when I was making clothes today. Though they were definitely getting better, these ones I'd made along today just didn't feel like they had any life in them. It seemed the same way with her swords, like they were just sort of... lifeless or something. Shaking my head clear of these thoughts, I said, "Well then, let's get it done and go give it back. He's probably been missing his, having to settle with whatever random surplus weapon he got from the army.

"That's true... But, didn't his old sword seem like army surplus too?" she tilted her head sideways slightly while she asked.

"That's besides the point!" I waved my hands around at random, "we'll give him a strong sword, since you went and broke his."

"I didn't know a regular sword couldn't take the force of that attack..." Keiko grumbled, opening our inventory and sorting through our various ores. We didn't have any weapons to break down and use as a starting point this time, so we would have to make the ingot from scratch. "Let's start with a « Super Refined Iron Ore»," she said while removing one from our inventory. The ore was one from our own stock, a few ranks higher than the stuff we generally used for the higher ranking members of the army. Shops didn't sell them, but they weren't terribly rare as mob drops, so we had plenty to spare.

"What about «Carbon Ore»? We should at least make him a sword that won't break from the same attack that broke his last one." Carbon strengthened weapons slightly, and also raised the durability when it was used with an iron ingot.

"Then how about a «Rhino Tusk» too?" Keiko responded. Though its name implied that it was a trash mat(well, it actually was) it could also be used to give a rather large increase the durability of weapons. On the downside, it also increased the weight considerably. Keiko had figured with a heavy tank build, that shouldn't be a problem. "What else then? It will have enough durability with those two."

"I'm thinking..." I started while scrolling down through our ores in my own inventory window. "...heh? What's this? It's called «Basic Beast Core»." Down near the bottom of the list, I came across something we only had one of, and brought up it's information screen, quickly finding out why. Right under the name, it said 『Special Boss Drop』. So, it must have been one of the things we'd gotten for killing that snake boss in that special dungeon. We hadn't sold the stuff we could use for crafting, and this was apparently one of them. It's only description was 『Grants animal based bonuses.』 It didn't say anything about what animal or what bonuses...

"Well, it has 'basic' in the name and we got it off a floor 1 boss, so it's probably not super strong at this point, but hopefully not too weak either. We may as well use it," she shrugged. That made three added ores. There was a limit of five to keep people from just using hundreds of extras to make overpowered weapons. Also, each extra one the smith added would reduce the effects of each one individually, so it wasn't always best to use all five spots.

"Let's leave it at that, any more will probably just weaken it." I advised. Keiko nodded and passed over the materialized items so I could put them into the furnace while I changed the setting to «Break Down». After waiting the required amount of time, I pulled the ingot forged by breaking down the four different components, checking its information while it was lying on the anvil.

"It's a... feral ingot?" Keiko asked, reading it from behind. I nodded, raising an eyebrow. Did it have something to do with the animal thing we'd added? Well, that was the only reasonable explanation really. It also listed that it had increased damage and durability, as expected. Like the ingot used to forge Asuna's «Sunbeam», it wasn't plainly colored, though also not as strange looking as her's was. It's slightly dark silver color was also speckled just a little bit with different colors, ranging from green to dark brown.

"Looks good," I noted, nodding. After changing the setting to «Forge», I used the tongs to place the ingot back into the furnace. Since it wasn't broken down from another weapon, a dropdown menu appeared, allowing me to select what type of weapon it would create. I selected 『One-handed Sword』 and the menu disappeared. The metal's speckled surface slowly began to glow, phasing through the usual red, orange, orange, white colors, until we removed it at the hottest stage.

Holding her blacksmith hammer, Keiko said quietly, "High attack, medium durability." As long as that's what she wanted, she'd get it. Focusing, she swung her hammer repeatedly, deliberately landing each hit while I counted to get a gauge of the weapon's overall class. Then, at thirty-seven hits, it finally emitted the bright flash which told that the forging was complete and the rectangular ingot began changing shape, slowly shifting and expanding.

First came the handle, which appeared to be a western style, with a long, straight handle, flared out all the way out at the end in a rather jewel-like shape, though flat on the sides parallel to the blade. Still glowing pure white, the guard appeared in a strange rounded shape around the blade which I couldn't really tell what it was supposed to look like. From there, two long and narrow pieces extended to either side, flaring outward and stopping in square, flat ends. Following the crossguard, the blade extended, perfectly straight, skinnier in width than I would have thought for a durability-type weapon. However, it just kept extending further and further, only stopping once the blade was nearly long enough to be a two-handed weapon. Good thing the guy it was for was so tall...

When the finished weapon had finally stopped changing form, the glow slowly faded, and we finally got to see what it would truly look like. Of course, both our jaws dropped when we saw what the strangely shaped guard looked like.

It was a lion. Well, a lion's head anyway. About twelve centimeters(5in) from end to end and a little thinner across, it had the head and mane included, with the jaw open as if in the middle of a roar. The abnormally long blade protruded directly from inside the lion's mouth. It was detailed completely, in golds and browns, to the whites of the eyes and everything. Where the lion's mane met the handle, it seemed to curl around and extend about halfway it's color like dirty blond hair extending down in slightly uneven spirals until it ended abruptly. It gave way to a slightly dark silver colored handle, much like the original ingot had been, with the same speckling. This extended into the jewel shaped end, it's color clearing and brightening to a pure, shining silver. On either side of the lion's jaw, both rectangular guard pieces were colored in the same shining silver.

The blade itself was silver as well, but had numerous, delicate swirls of gold traveling the entire length of the blade to its tip. While I opened the weapon's stats window and compared it to my own- now known by heart- I saw that it was indeed weaker than my own sword. It was so much more decorated, it appeared like it should be a much higher class of weapon... After looking through the basic information, I glanced down to the special effects. At that point, my eyes widened in surprise, because it had an effect I'd never seen on a weapon- no, on any equipment before. 『STR +5』.

This weapon actually gave a boost to Strength. I'd heard rumors about equipment that could do things like that, but the general consensus was that we wouldn't find anything like that until much later on. Well, I guess not... because here was the first one. And it was called... I glanced up to read the name of this new special weapon we had forged.

『Mark of Bravery』. "This is one lucky guy," I noted. Though I wasn't looking at her, I could feel Keiko nod slowly. As expected it had a huge STR requirement to wield, even more than our own swords, but that wouldn't be a problem, especially since he would also have an extra five points over his regular Strength while using it. Given the incredible quality of this weapon, we decided to reinforce it as well. It had a maximum of fifteen reinforcements, so we maxed it out, giving it five points in Sharpness and ten points in Speed, since he would need it to make up for the weight of the blade. We also didn't want to increase the durability, thereby increasing the weight even more.

The only thing left was to test if it could withstand the force of the same Sword Skill which had broken the man's former weapon. We quickly sent a message to him, asking to meet in the plaza on the seventh floor. Glancing at the screen while Keiko typed out the message I saw that his name was Vale. He responded that it would take him a few minutes to get to the square. We were fine with that, since we would need to find something to hit with the sword first.

Teleporting up to the seventh floor, we quickly sprinted out of the city boundaries and found the first group of enemies nearby. They were a kind of bull, which was good. We'd need something sturdy to hit. Keiko equipped the weapon, with its STR requirement of 31 points, compared to our own weapons' requirement of just 25. She was able to hold it herself because we had boosted our Strength higher than necessary until the weapon felt light enough to wield easily. Even with the +5, boosting her total Strength to 39 points, she could still feel its weight. While I drew aggro of one bull and lured it away from surrounding mobs, Keiko stood nearby.

She slowly drew the weapon from its sheath, assuming the position for her «Flash Draw», holding for a moment, then suddenly tearing across the space instantaneously the weapon's trailing attack effect blasting all through the bull and destroying it in a single attack. The weapon slid back into the sheath with a light clank, the lion's head appearing as if it was eating the black leather covering.

"Looks like it's durable enough, let's get back quickly, before we're late," Keiko said with a big smile. I nodded quickly and we both dashed across the wide plane, the sun already having set some time ago. Once back in the square, we found that Vale had actually beaten us there after all. Identifying him by his MTD clan symbol amongst the crowd, we walked over, apologizing for being late and saying we had to test his sword first to be sure it was strong enough. "It can take the strength of the attack that broke your old sword," Keiko grinned as she explained.

"Ah, that's... good," he answered halfheartedly at the talk of how his old sword broke. However, as soon as Keiko brought up the blade for him to take, his expression changed. He looked rather confused, while mumbling "is that a..." Taking the blade offered to him, he drew it from the sheath, the full length of the blade being a past a meter(~3.75ft) on its own. Staring up the weapon's length in awe, he turned it over a few times, moving it to sway in his hand to test the weight.

"It's called «Mark of Bravery »." Keiko told him with a smile. "I told you I'd make you a better sword." She quickly transferred the item to him and he equipped it. His expression changed to surprise, probably when the weight suddenly decreased due to the increase in his STR stat. "It's the first piece of equipment I've ever seen that offers a stat increase. It gives +5 to Strength," she explained.

Staring, he slowly began to say, "Th,tha-"

"Don't thank us, idiot," Keiko laughed. "It's an apology for breaking your old one."

"Still, is it ok for me to keep this? Isn't it a bit much?"

"It's no problem. However, that is an extraordinary weapon, so when you're done with it, tell us so we can make something else out of it. Ok?"

"Sure, no problem." He nodded emphatically. We after that, we said we had something else to do and headed off again. Of course, this 'other thing' was just training up our «Tailoring» skill as much as we possibly could before it got too late and we had to go to sleep before the scouting battle tomorrow.

Both grinding the skill this time, we just managed to get it to level 40 before bed.


	107. Chapter 102

**Scouting Under Fire**** Chapter 102**

_Author Note: Sorry, that last chapter wasn't supposed to be filler like that. It was supposed to cover a lot more, but wound up being a lot longer than I thought once I wrote it out and I had a full chapter before I moved on to the other stuff. -_-;_

The following day was the scouting battle, so we got up and headed over to get to the seventh floor plaza. Probably thinking the same thing, a lot of other people did the same. It wasn't planned to begin until 9:00 am, but there were almost twenty people there at 7:00 am, when we arrived. To kill time, (and partly because there were a bunch of people) we brought our «Vendor's Carpet» along and offered any last minute touch ups on weapons and such at a lower rate than the regular market price.

Like that, we passed the time before the scouting battle would start, making some money and continuing to increase our crafting skills. In the few minutes before it was about to start, we shot back down to our inn room on the second floor to put the carpet back again, since there was no other way to store it, then got back, right on time. Right about the same time, Asuna arrived. She came from the field and not the gate, making me think she must have been grinding before the battle.

As everyone formed up around Asuna, her eyes ran over everyone, not even hanging over the two of us as they passed. Then, she audibly sighed before straightening her back and announcing: "Ok everyone! Let's get going!" With just that, we all set out across the wide field, headed toward the huge tower leading to the next floor, far in the distance. Traveling at a normal pace with everyone else, it took nearly an hour to reach the large building's base.

Around 10:00 am, on arrival, we all split up into parties, and I realized for the first time that we didn't really have all that many people here. Besides the early twenty, only another five or so had come at the planned time. That left us short of thirty people. Hadn't there been more at the meeting? I thought we had _at least_ thirty-five back then. Given our total of twenty-eight people, we at least managed to split into even parties, though we only had four parties, hardly half of an actual raid group.

There was most notably a shortage of tanks among us. We wound up in a party with three spear users, a macer, and two more swordsmen. Asuna went with another party, with even more spear wielders and another pair of swordsmen. The remaining two parties had our three tanks split among them. Hadn't Asuna split up everyone more evenly than this too? These parties were terribly lopsided. Nearly everyone was light-medium armored, and the proportion of spear men was way too high.

Approaching her quietly while we began moving into the dungeon, I voiced my thoughts to Asuna without attracting attention. "It's because of that Kibaou-san. Most of the heavily armored players are part of his guild, so they never show up for these things when called." Now that she mentioned it, of all the various guild tags around back at the meeting, there were quite a few of the same one. Maybe that was his guild?

"What are they called?"

"They're the «Aincrad Liberation Corps». They make up about a third of the clearing group right now, but they keep drawing in new members and it's already getting hard for everyone else, since they aren't very cooperative with nonmembers," Asuna explained. I nodded. So this was the situation on the frontline. I wonder how a third group, the army, joining into this tense scene would go.

We continued on, only meeting mobs here and there as we climbed clear to the top of the tower, that taking nearly another hour at this pace. I really couldn't understand who would walk around in a world so big...

Whatever the case, we finally stood atop one more dungeon, directly before the doors to the Boss room. "Ok everyone, here's how we're going to do this. The tanks... err... the swordsmen are going to move in first to draw aggro. Don't attack and keep your guard up. First thing is to find out what kind of attacks this Boss uses. When I make the call, then the spear men will move in and we'll deal enough damage to take down the boss's first bar of hp. Then we back off to watch for any changes in its attack patterns. That's all we're here for today, got it?"

"Oh!" everyone cried in return. Following Asuna's instructions, Keiko and I quickly opened our menus and equipped our armor. It turned out (as we'd found our early this morning when we'd woken up and put it on) that the armor was _incredibly_ uncomfortable, so we had no intention of wearing it when there wasn't any need. Now going into the Boss Room, we would need it. So, as everyone was walking in, the medium weight armor appeared all around us, and we looked like actual members of the army for the first time. It was decently heavy, and definitely slowed us down some, but it wasn't too bad.

Inside the room, it was dark, a kind of grayish mist hanging in the air all around. With everyone standing inside the room, it finally lit up. Unlike the first floor, which at this point was the only other boss room we'd seen, this one wasn't all multi-colored. Instead, it was a bright, blinding white like the rest of the floor. I squinted as the sudden light engulfed the room.

Then, there was a blinding flash. I'm still unsure exactly what happened next, because I definitely lost consciousness. The next thing I knew, I was pinned to the back wall of the chamber by a large arrow. For several seconds, I hung there, dazed as I was unsure of what was happening. Then I realized, I must have been shot. Of course it was _me_ who got shot. Looking across the room, I saw a figure, smaller than I would expect for a boss. Even with in my dazed state, my incredible visual perception allowed me to make out every detail of the boss, even at this distance. However, the only thing I was looking at was the huge war bow in its hands, another arrow slowly being drawn back.

My eyes then traveled to my hp bar. I wasn't dead, so how bad was this sort of injury? I had to grin, the new armor was doing its job. Getting pierced right through like this had only taken out about half of my hp. As my senses finally began to return, so did the agonizing pain running straight through my chest where I'd been shot. I grit my teeth, eyes turning again to the hostile enemy. In the few moments since I'd been shot, it looked like everyone was finally recovering from the shock of the surprise attack. They started moving forward, but the boss released another powerful arrow.

Everyone started to duck out of the way until they realized its trajectory. My breath caught and my eyes widened. The second arrow was aimed at me again, directly toward my face. As I realized this, my body responded automatically. My head jerked sideways, bending over far at the neck so the arrow just barely managed to graze my cheek in the next instant. I let out a heavy breath. Get moving! I shouted at myself.

Reaching up, I grabbed the arrow still embedded in my chest and pulled hard, gritting my teeth when it sent a massive flash of white pain through my head. "Argh!" I grunted, using all my strength to rip the arrow straight out of the wall and myself in one go, throwing it sideways across the floor. It bounced a couple times before stopping and vanishing into shards of light. Meanwhile, I fell to my knees, holding my chest as I began coughing painfully. Kieko was at my side at the next moment, kneeling down as she shouted for someone else to draw aggro.

Looking back up from the ground, I hardly had time to see before I threw myself sideways again. Another arrow blasted into the ground where I'd been, throwing the two of us apart. I rolled across the floor, managing to get back to my feet. Unless someone else attacked the boss, it would just keep attacking me. Whether it was designed to attack whoever had the lowest health, or just cheese another target for each shot, it didn't matter, because it would always choose me. I grit my teeth as I slid sideways to dodge the next attack, downing a potion while the boss drew another arrow.

Looking across the floor before its next attack, I finally got a chance to look at it. Surprisingly, it was called 『The Elven Sentinel』. As the name implied, it was an elf, clearly identifiable by its large, pointed ears. By now, the rest of the group had began the charge, leaving just Keiko and myself back here. However, as they ran, I saw monsters dropping from the ceiling to intercept them. I dodged another arrow, no longer a problem now that I saw them coming.

Then, we charged in ourselves, quickly closing the gap toward the rest of the group, now bogged down by about nine more enemies. Searching for the red cursors among all the allies, I took note of their names. 『Elven Defender』, all of them. Ignoring the main group, we both dashed around the side. Though we couldn't move our full speed in this armor, it was still more than enough to get past the crowd and close in on the Boss. Up closer now, I took a really good look at it. Female, green, well decorated armor, snow white hair, bow in hand, curved sword at her waist...

As I ran, I took stock of all the pieces of information we would need once the scouting fight was over. Four bars of hp. Probably had low defense, considering she used a bow and it was difficult to get close enough to attack. She was smaller than I'd expect of a boss, considering that I'd hardly come up to the knee of the first floor boss. However, the elf was still more than two meters(6.5 ft) tall. No wonder why those arrows she fired were so big. At that height, it might be possible to land a couple critical hits, though it would be difficult. Well, as long as the neck was the weak point as usual.

As we moved past the crowd currently working on taking down the 『Elven Defenders』, more appeared to block our path. However, we just dodged and weaved past while continuing to close ground on the boss. At about fifteen meters, instead of drawing another arrow to fire at me, she suddenly began drawing them in threes, firing in rapid succession so we had to dodge all over the place as they shot in a spread, blasting into the ground all around us. Still not enough to stop us, we moved close enough to finally attack.

I swung my sword around, slicing out with a basic «Horizontal» while I brought my dagger up to follow with a «Linear». However, shortly before our first attacks reached the large elf, she simply vanished. Both skidding to a stop, we looked all around, finding the elf halfway across the room, with another arrow already on its way toward us. We parted on either side of it and started running, but when it hit the ground behind us, a huge explosion erupted, unlike any attacks before it. What was with this Boss anyway?

The explosion sent us both off our feet, sliding along the floor momentarily until we could roll back out of the slide. As we dug our feet in to run again, the mobs we had ignored before fell on us. I got my arm up just in time to block a hit to my side, though the elf's short sword dug in through my armor. Keiko fared better, avoiding the first attack sent her way. Before the ones behind them could get close enough, we kicked off, quickly moving out of range.

Again closing in on that elusive elf, more defenders dropped from above. They were smaller, just about normal human height, but wore heavy armor of a dark, musty greenish color, brighter forest green capes attached at the back. They had round shields and short swords. Obviously not meant for taking us down, just delaying us while the boss attacked with arrows from afar, they had two bars of hp and very high defense with all that armor. Interestingly, while they all wore identical armor, they did not have helmets, allowing me to see that they had differently colored hair.

Although, I doubted that their hair color was any indication of anything, like strength or rank. They all had the same name, so their stats should all be equal. Blowing past all the new ones trying to block us, we finally managed to get in range of 『The Elven Sentinel』. Bringing our swords up to point forward, we initiated «Sonic Leap», allowing us to surpass the normal movement speed limit. Leaping across the number of meters between us, we both brought our swords swinging down, toward the elf boss.

Turning, she drew the curved sword at her waist and swung to parry both attacks to the side. We both landed, spinning to avoid her following Sword Skill, before going on the attack. The boss seemed to use regular curved sword type Sword Skills once in melee range, and was fast, but couldn't fight both of us at once. Unfortunately, the 『Elf Defenders』 caught up shortly after and we were forced to split, Keiko continuing to fight the boss while I held back the defenders. While using powerful, wide area slashes, I managed to hold off a line of them while redirecting their attention on myself and drawing them away from Keiko's duel. Although, I could hardly put a dent in their hp. No wonder why the main group was still so held up on them. I payed attention to the distance, sure not to move too far away in the process.

After about a minute of this, Keiko finally took out the last of the elf's first bar of health. Shortly after, the boss seemed to teleport away again, all the way across the room, back toward her original position.

"Everyone, we've completed our objective! Retreat!" Asuna called. Now that we'd taken out the first bar of hp, we were supposed to check for any changes in the boss's attack patterns. Considering that she used a bow, we could retreat at the same time. As everyone backed off, slowly moving back to ward off the continuing attacks from the front by the boss's guardians.

Meanwhile, I just ran around like a lunatic while she used me for target practice. When everyone else had cleared out, we darted past all the guards and out the door as well. Unlike other mobs, the special Boss Room mobs wouldn't leave the Boss Room if you ran away from them, so we were safe out here. Stopping to catch my breath, I leaned over for a few seconds.

"Jeez, this one is craz-" pain exploded through my back and I went crashing through the crowd of other people. When I finally skidded to a stop on the ground again, I pushed up, to see an arrow sticking out of the front of my chest. It would keep causing piercing damage over time as long as it stayed there, so I reached up and tore it out with a gasp of pain.

Staggering back to my feet again, I swung around to look back. Hundreds of meters away, 『The Elven Sentinel』still stood at the far end of the Boss Room, her next arrow notched and about to fire. "Oh come on!" I shouted, leaping sideways as she released. Everyone ducked, and the arrow went tearing by overhead. Scrambling to our feet again, everyone continued rushing away from the boss room, more arrows continuing to fly down the long hall behind us until we finally turned a corner, to safety.

Sliding to the floor against the indestructible wall, I let out ragged, panting breaths. While I'd never really come particularly close to dying, getting shot through with giant arrows was _not_ a pleasant feeling. The pain faded pretty quickly, but it hurt like hell getting shot like that. It really made me hope that she would choose a different pincushion for the Boss Raid... Except she wouldn't... I sighed miserably, "It really is always me..."

Having finished the scouting battle, we all headed back to town and went over the information. Later in the day, another meeting was held with the first scouting group and we traded info between our two groups. With everything laid out, the Boss Raid was set for the following day.


	108. Chapter 103

**Seventh Floor Boss Raid**** Chapter 103**

The next day, we woke up early as usual. The Boss Raid wouldn't take place until noon. First off, we used the free time to repair my armor. It had two huge holes punched through the front and back before, and even if they disappeared once the arrows were removed, its durability had decreased significantly. It really wasn't difficult, it just required us to set it on the anvil and hit it with a blacksmith hammer a number of times.

Following that, we went out for a morning hunt. As we ran across the desolate field to find some mobs, something suddenly occurred to me. There weren't any elves on this floor, but the Boss was an elf. She even had more elves to defend her while she fired her bow at us. Hadn't someone said that there were elf villages on the eighth floor? So, that would mean they were basically defending the entrance to the elves' floor. Well, that explained the Boss' name, 『The Elven Sentinel』.

Then again, hadn't we heard about that from those NPCs? It was the old hermit and the woman Fiona who had mentioned them, wasn't it? As those two names went through my head, I put my hand to my face, where the large black mark still resided. At the same time, I thought about how we still had to find the NPC girl Ferin if we wanted to get them removed.

Even after we found some mobs and started slaughtering them for some quick experience, these thoughts continued to roll around in my head. After a couple hours of grinding mindlessly, a sudden flash of light brought my out of my dazed state.

"Oh, looks like we finally leveled up again," Keiko noted. We put our three new points into Agility, giving us forty-four points, and decided that it should be enough for now. We still had a number of hours left before the Boss raid, so we got on our way back to the city.

To kill the rest of the time, we kept working on our crafting skills. When noon finally came near, the plaza filled with many a lot of high level frontliners. Numbering somewhere between sixty and eighty, this would be our raid group. Today, Asuna and Kibaou also showed up early, though they didn't call everyone to order or anything. When the town's clock tower finally rang out to signify that the middle of the day had come, everyone grew quiet, even the other frontliners around who weren't part of the raid group.

"Ok everyone!" Asuna spoke loudly in her serious voice. "First up, everyone join into parties of seven." Following her instructions, a clamor broke out for a few minutes while many parties were created. Once it quieted again, indicating that we'd all joined up, Kibaou stepped forward.

"Alright you bastards, here's the plan! The Boss can teleport, so we're spreading out through the room. Those damn guardians pop out whenever we move around, so hold your ground until the Boss appears near you. Then you beat the hell out of it until it teleports away again. That's all, let's get going!" And excited cheer went up all around.

Well that was... simple... I thought slowly. Whatever the case, everyone started moving out. We tried to stick at least sort of close to the random party members we'd joined up with, but quickly found it futile amongst the huge crowd when we didn't even know what any of them looked like.

An hour long trek across the empty rock field brought us back to the same towering stone column from the day before, and we all shuffled inside through the wide doorway at its base. Another hour to make it to the top, and we finally stood before the massive Boss Room doors.

I was standing somewhere in the middle, shorter than everyone around me, so I couldn't see who it was that actually pushed open the doors, but as they slowly swung inward, Kibaou's voice cried out, "Charge!" A roaring round of shouts exploded from the clearers as everyone began rushing through the open doors. When the space before me opened, I flung myself forward as well.

_Smack_. Without warning, I felt myself bounce off of some sort of invisible boundary, only to be crushed back against it by the guy behind me. After a few moments, everyone backed off again. "What's going on?" I asked aloud.

"We hit the raid limit. Only forty-nine players can be in the Boss Room at once," someone among the small crowd explained.

"That basically makes us reserve forces, in case anyone gets low and runs back out here," another chimed in, dissatisfaction obvious in his voice. Looking closely now, I saw a faint glimmer I recognized. Running my hand along the barely visible surface, I realized it was another barrier formed of magic. I guess they used it for this kind of thing too.

"It just sucks that the «Force» thinks they're entitled to always start the battles," one guy complained loudly, taking my thoughts back to the moment. I was about to ask what this «Force» was when I figured it out myself. He must have been talking about Kibaou's group. I glanced back to everyone inside, rushing to spread out before the room lit up and the battle began. As I'd expected, most of the guild icons inside were of his group, the «Aincrad Liberation Corps». As I watched, the room lit up, again flashing with blinding bright light.

Again, when the light finally cleared from my eyes, I found myself with a huge arrow buried in me. As I went skidding across the floor, apparently knocked out again by the sudden pain, I threw my hands out to steady myself and kicked back up from the ground. "Oh come on! I'm not even in the room this time!" I shouted at the elven women already knocking her next arrow. I tore the long shaft of wood from my side and downed a potion before she released her next attack. Ducking sideways, it slid past a short distance away. As long as I was watching, she wouldn't be able to hit me.

"Aaargh!" a cry came from behind, spinning to look, I saw that the arrow fired at me had landed in the gut of another man. He was thrown back by the force, bowling over the others around him.

"Oh god, I'm sorry!" I shouted. I hadn't thought about the people behind me when I'd dodged that arrow... turning back, I looked just in time for the next shot to land in my chest. My feet kicked out from under me and I was sent rolling across the floor again.

"Ahh, damn it!" I gasped in pain, "don't look away from the person shooting you!" I commanded myself. Ripping out the second arrow, I staggered to my feet again. Even with my fast healing, I only had a third of my hp left. I definitely couldn't let another of those arrows hit me at least until I had half health again.

"Why is the Boss shooting at _us_? We're not even in the room!" someone demanded from behind.

"Onii-chan, are you ok?" Keiko asked quietly, standing about arms length away so I'd have room to move.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just can't keep letting her shoot me," I noted. "I'm sorry everyone, just defend yourselves for now. Hopefully they'll distract her soon enough." As the next few arrows flew past, I moved deftly to avoid them while my hp continued to increase. I heard each arrow make a heavy _thunk_ sound as blasted into a shield behind me, though I didn't dare turn away to look.

This went on for a number of minutes, until the main group of attackers managed to dispatch the guardians blocking the way and reach the archer at the far end of the room. As expected, she disappeared, seeming to teleport all the way across the room in an instant. Of course she landed in the most deserted place, a short distance from the doorway. While the closest group wasn't far off, they had to contend with the heavily armored guardians to reach her.

At this range, of no more than ten meters, the white haired elf drew five arrows across the bow. "Oh come on..." I muttered. Steadying myself, I watched her long draw, then, right when I felt she was about to fire, threw myself to the ground.

A loud twang. Numerous screams. As I pushed up from the ground, I glanced back to see that the attack had spread out, hitting people all over the front of the group behind me. Already drawing another volley, I found the expression on the elf's face strange. Not the angry, glaring expression I would expect from someone trying so very hard to kill me. It was more of an empty, kind of bored look. Of course, while I was noticing this completely unimportant fact, the elf boss was still drawing back her bow.

Throwing myself aside again, I took a glancing hit to the arm, though it hardly did anything and the damage was soon healed. More cries from the ones hit in the crossfire followed. Come on, what was the raid group inside doing anyway? As if to answer my question, they finally broke through the few remaining 『Elven Defenders』 and fell on the boss on all sides, swinging their weapons angrily as she drew her own curved sword and deflected as much as she could.

It had taken them most of the time to reach her, but them managed to cut through two bars- half of her total hit points- before she vanished again. "That move..." I noticed. "It looks almost just like «Flash», right Keiko?" I turned, asking my sister. She nodded twice, and I realized she'd been thinking the same thing.

Near the center of the room, the elf stood, drawing back on her bow again. Of course, during the scouting battle, we'd taken out the first bar of hp to see if her attacks would change, but hadn't really noticed anything. So, we still had no idea what she might do when we took out the second and third. That said, I could already tell that something was different. As she drew back the next arrow, I readied myself for whatever might happen.

Then, as she neared full draw, she suddenly released the arrow early. Lurching sideways, I fell over as the arrow flew past. She hadn't waited to draw back for full power, so the early attack had caught me off guard. As I threw myself back up to my feet, she already had another arrow knocked and drawn. I threw myself to the other side as it sailed in, nailing itself to the floor where I'd just been. Rolling to my feet, I dashed toward the left hand wall to avoid the next shot. I kicked off the wall and an arrow appeared in the stone a meter past where I'd been.

She really was firing a lot faster now. As she relentlessly pounded my position with more arrows, I just kept throwing myself out of their path with everything I had. Eventually, another man reached her, a dagger-user. Launching a sneak attack from behind, he managed a strong critical hit before she could respond. Of course, enough time had passed for her to simply «Flash» away again.

The strong attack was enough to reduce her hp to just one bar, but more defenders appeared from the ceiling to block off the raid group inside. With her health lower now, the elf's attacks increased in speed further. Drawing one arrow after another from a seemingly bottomless quiver, the attacks rained down with such ferocity, I found myself simply scrambling at random to avoid them. All behind me, the reserve group had all backed farther down the hallway, clearly having realized that she was only interested in shooting me. Unable to help, even Keiko had retreated to left hand wall, standing near the door into the Boss Room.

Of course, the "Good job!" and "Keep it up!" they all shouted at me from relative safety didn't help. Without warning, the barrage of arrows stopped. I stood up, panting heavily and stared at the elf woman. She slowly drew another arrow now, bringing it back to full draw and holding it there. I saw her take a deep breath and the arrow began glowing brighter. Oh man, what was she doing now?

Spreading me feet, I got ready. With my incredibly keen eyesight, I saw when the muscles in her arm tensed, right before she would fire. Leaping to the left, I hit the floor and rolled sideways, up to my feet as the arrow tore past, hitting the ground a number of meters behind with a huge explosion. As the floor rocked, my view bucked momentarily. She made some kind of movement before drawing her next arrow, though I couldn't be sure just what it was she did.

Just when I began to move to avoid the next arrow, I felt a powerful sting hit my shoulder and thigh at the same time, stunning me momentarily. Throwing needles? However, it was enough time that I couldn't completely avoid the incoming arrow, and took it to my left shoulder, the force sending me spinning off my feet. As I landed, struggling through the pain to get back up, another arrow landed in my opposite shoulder, pinning it to the ground.

"Aaah!" I let out a pained gasp. Grabbing the arrow with my left hand, I grit my teeth and started to tear it out, but another was already on its way. Appearing from thin air, Keiko stood in front of me, a potion tipped up to her mouth as she drank it down. She threw the glass bottle away, shattering into light against the ground while the arrow aimed for me punched into her side. Even as the huge force pushed her backward, she stood her ground. Another arrow tore through her stomach, aimed directly at my head. With a great effort, I tore the arrow from my right shoulder, freeing myself from my pinned position as a third arrow blew through Keiko's right thigh.

"That's all I can take," she said, moving aside as the next arrow flung toward me. Free now, I rolled sideways to avoid it. As she said, taking three arrows like that had reduced her into the red zone. If they'd been fully drawn shots instead of fired at just half-draw, she wouldn't even have been able to take that many.

As I staggered to my feet again, preparing to try and dodge more incoming shots, I realized that the repeated shock and pain from getting hit had deadened all of my senses. I could hardly even move anymore. Despite that, I flung myself sideways to avoid the next arrow. But, as expected, I couldn't maintain my balance and fell to the floor. Another arrow already on its way, I rolled backward to avoid, just narrowly getting out of the way.

However, I couldn't roll any further, because I was right up against a small wall of arrows stuck into the ground. Pushing back up from the ground, I still couldn't muster enough strength before the next arrow tore into my shoulder. Though I could hardly take any more, I had to sigh in relief. Because the raid group had finally finished the defenders and crashed inward onto the Boss with wild ferver. Even so, before she died, she managed to get off one more arrow, which landed dead in my chest, taking me down into the red zone as well.

As the Boss Room lights returned to a normal level, fading to a light bluish color, I found myself reminded of that time we'd been ambushed inside the first floor boss room. As many loud cheers and laughter came from the empty room, I heard Kibaou's voice shout above it all.

"Ahahaha! That wasn't even hard! Let's slaughter the rest just like this one!" Heh, not hard. _Right_. That's because she didn't shoot even one arrow at any of you...

After a minute, the main portion of the raid group came back because none of us had come in once the fight ended. Of course, they got to find Keiko and myself all stabbed full of arrows. Coming forward from the main group were both Asuna and Kirito.

"Are you two ok?!" Asuna exclaimed, looking back and forth between us. Even if we were low health, and with this many arrows stabbed through us, our healing outpaced the damage over time, so we would be fine. Just had to get these arrows out, I felt like I would faint any second.

"We're fine-" with the sound of breaking glass, my battered armor finally succumbed to the damage over time of the three arrows still stuck in me. "Looks like... my armor... isn't though..." I tried to grin through the pain.

Sitting down on the floor in front of me, Asuna reached down and grabbed onto the arrow protruding from my chest. She tried to pull it out, and I grit my teeth, a low anguished sound tearing through my throat as she couldn't get it to budge.

"What's wrong? You can't feel any pain here," Kirito said.

"For us... the... pain dampening... doesn't work." I slowly got out through heavy pants. At my words everyone's jaws dropped.

"N,no way... d,does that mean..." Asuna began.

"That you feel all of this?" Kirito finished her sentence breathily. Feeling unable to speak, I could only nod a few times. When he saw this, Kirito knelt down, taking the first arrow in his hand and tearing it out in one swift motion.

"Gah!" I gasped. His hand drew back to toss it away, but Keiko caught him.

"Wait, I think we might find some use for those arrows," she said, "can we have them?"

Breaking into the conversation, Kibaou shouted, "why would these two get all of them?"

"Because they kept that archer from putting every one of those arrows into all of you!" Asuna snapped, with such seething rage that Kibaou backed off immediately. Meanwhile, Kirito nodded to my sister's question, and she opened her menu to store the arrows.

Following that, Kirito tore each one out of both of us, while everyone else watched with expressions like they were wanted to be sick, but just couldn't look away. At least with all the arrows out of me, the pain was subsiding, though it was going to take a while after all that.

Now that we didn't look a second away from dying, most of the raid group made their way to the stairs to the next floor. They would go ahead and activate the «Teleport Gate» on that floor. Meanwhile, Kirito, Asuna, and a few others (one of note was Vale, who we had made the special sword «Mark of Bravery» for recently) stayed behind to help us collect the many arrows all stuck in the floor and walls.

Once they were all stored in our inventory, we all went off quickly to try and catch up with the main group before they activated the «Teleport Gate». There was always a party in the new town and everyone would thank the ones who had defeated the boss. We didn't want to miss it and let them get all the thanks when they hadn't done all the work. Hell, considering that they had all fought the small mobs which appeared with the boss, I'd probably done the largest chunk of work during that fight myself, even if I hadn't landed a single attack on the elf.

Whatever the case, we quickly moved to catch up as we all climbed the final stairs and emerged on the Eighth floor. Standing atop a low hill, there was a rather large town a short distance below. Kibaou's group was at the bottom of the hill, about to enter the city. We all ran across the new, lightly forested floor, down the grassy hill. This area seemed to directly contrast the previous floor. Everything was covered in a thick carpet of grass, which felt soft and amazingly comfortable beneath my feet. If we weren't trying to catch the other group, I would have considered just lying down and taking a nap right here.

Moving down the hill and into the city, constructed mainly of wood houses, with a few stone-sided buildings here and there, we finally caught up just outside the town center. All moving together, we stood in the plaza while Asuna and Kibaou approached the «Teleport Gate». Following the trend I'd seen on previous floors, this one was constructed with materials of this floor. Two trees without low branches grew upward, their trunks leaning inward until they met, several meters overhead, and swirled, twining around each other as they rose, until finally a puffy canopy of vibrant green leaves seemed to explode outward, covering the top of the trees.

Both leaders of the raid group walked forward, each one reaching out and touching one of the trees which made up the gate. Between them a blue haze appeared, flaring brightly for just a moment, then reducing to a light shimmer in the air. A few seconds passed quietly as everyone waited. Of course there was no way to know how long it would take everyone on the lower floors to notice that a new floor had opened, since there was no sort of announcement about it. However, it only took seconds.

There were people waiting, probably some since the raid group formed at noon, staring at their maps and waiting for the eighth floor to appear as an option to teleport here. I'd seen it before on the days a floor would open, since I'd never been on this side of the opening ceremonies before.

The first blue light appeared before us, followed within a moment by hundreds more. With that, the Eighth floor opening ceremony began, signaling that on the Tenth of February, we had successfully conquered another 1% of this world.


	109. Chapter 104

**Impatience, and a Second Visit**** Chapter 104**

As we had expected, the eighth floor was home to the elven race. All the towns were filled with elf NPCs and many of the mobs were various kinds of rouge elves. Liking the atmosphere, we relocated our base of operations(our inn room) here. We continued acting as the army's members of the clearing group- Raynes and the other frontline level army members finally joining too. We only had sixteen members joining, but it was enough to strongly bolster the clearing group. It wasn't long before the dungeon's complex gate puzzle (one consisting of a number of switches which interacted with a locking mechanism) was completed, allowing the clearing group to progress inside.

The elf trend continued within the dungeon, as they appeared as nearly every type of mob inside. It was the dungeon itself that intrigued most people. Once past the outer wall of the column which rose to the next floor, it was composed of so many trees that it created pathways inside. Of course, there were small gaps here and there, leading into many secret areas with both traps and treasure.

Due to the nature of the area, it didn't have the long, straight corridors like many previous dungeons. Instead, it was more similar to the cave we had cleared with Raynes. While it was mainly narrow and winding, with many mobs waiting to ambush anyone inside, there were a small number of open patches, sometimes with a small stream or pond. In these areas, there would sometimes be larger sub-boss level mobs, which took a couple parties coordinated efforts to defeat. One that we fought personally was a large beast which seemed to be a cross between a hyena and a bird, with scales instead of fur.

Once we ascended from the first dungeon floor, we found ourselves atop the tree canopy, so thick we could stand on it. Of course, more trees continued even farther up, providing the next floors as well. In about a week, we arrived at the top floor, which we discovered to be the boss room. Due to the unique layout of the boss room, it took five days of scouting battles, battles to discover that the next boss was the leader of the village of hostile elves which covered the last floor. When finally had the Boss Raid, it was a tough battle, with most of the reserve forces also entering when a portion of the «Force» members got caught from behind and died or ran. Still, we got through it with minimal losses and moved on. Also, Asuna got the last attack on the boss this time. The Eighth floor took longer to clear than usual, and we finally activated the next «Teleport Gate» on the Twenty-First.

The next floor, a mix between rocky land and grassy marsh, was much easier, since there was no actual dungeon. Instead, the Boss was in a small field, blocking the way to the staircase. It looked like a really tough monster some sort of centaur with thick steel armor and a poleaxe larger than me. So, everyone had to grind for a few days before we challenged it, but we managed to overwhelm and finish it off with little enough trouble. To balance out the long clear time on the Eighth floor, we cleared the Ninth in just five days, on the Twenty-Sixth.

A couple days into the Tenth floor, Argo still hadn't gotten back to us about Ferin, meaning she still hadn't heard of an NPC by that name on these higher floors. Just how much higher would we need to go before we could get these ridiculous marks off? Still, just to make sure, we sent her a message asking and she confirmed that there weren't any NPCs by that name on the first ten floors. On hearing this, we decided to head back to Fiona, the mother, and ask again if she knew. Maybe she would have something new to tell us by now.

Arriving back in «Finreo» on the Seventh floor, we ran across the barren earth to «Maren», the outer east edge town where Fiona lived. Retracing our steps to the little house, we walked inside.

"Excuse us me for intruding" we both said as we stepped into the seemingly deserted house without a purpose. Really, now that I thought about it, why would anyone else come in here if they didn't know there was actually an NPC inside? Not to mention, even if they did know, this NPC didn't have any quest or anything to offer. Huh...

With these thoughts rolling around in my head, we turned into the kitchen, the old woman seeming to not have moved at all since we were here last. Sitting at the small table, she looked over at us and a smile began forming on her face.

"A,ah! No, it's not like we've found your daughter yet," I quickly tried explaining when I realized that should be the only reason for us to come back here. Hearing that, the old woman's face immediately darkened.

"Actually, we were here to get some more advice. So far we haven't been able to find her, even with a lot of help. Do you really have no idea which floor she might be on? We've pretty much searched every inch of the first ten floors and haven't found her anywhere."

At that last part, Fiona suddenly perked up. "Well, she wouldn't be up there." We both stared at her for a few seconds.

"Wait, why?" we asked at the same time.

"Well, at the time when this all happened, the adventurers had only activated the «Teleport Gates» up to the eighth floor. There was no way to get any higher than that. She would have had to run through the dungeon and past the Boss to get any higher up. Since then, all the adventurers disappeared and the monsters came back. Even the «Teleport Gates» deactivated. It was only recently that more adventurers managed to get up here. That means she couldn't be anywhere higher up, she has to be lower." Again, we both stared for a minute.

She has to be on a floor we've opened already... As this single thought repeated in my mind, Keiko asked me quietly, "if she's lower down, why doesn't Argo-san have any info on her?"

"Mmmm, I don't know. Maybe she's in some remote location like that hermit?" I suggested.

"Does Argo-san know about him?" she replied. We both looked at each other for a few seconds before pulling up our friend list and sending a message asking if she knew of the hermit on the second floor. Her split second answer was that it would cost us 100,000 Col for an answer about that. Confused by her response, I thought for a minute before sending back, 『Why so costly? We just want to know if you've heard of that monk in the mountains because we were thinking that Ferin might be in some remote location no one has explored.』

Her next message seemed to go in a completely different direction. 『Oh, I was thinking of something else. Yeah, I know that there's a hermit in the mountains. There shouldn't be anywhere on the floors so far which hasn't been explored. I have quite a few people helping me check everywhere, so I definitely shouldn't have missed it. 』 With that, we sent her a 'thanks anyway,' sort of message and both sighed.

So, Ferin was definitely on one of the floors below the eighth. Figuring we could rule out this one as well, that just left floors one to six. Six floors, and somewhere down there was a place that even Argo and all the scouts helping her explore had been unsuccessful at finding. All the floors were huge, many with tricky landscapes. She might even be inside an unexplored dungeon! The possibilities really were endless.

After we left the small house, on our way back to the edge of town so we could head back to the «Teleport Gate» on this floor, I turned to Keiko.

"Hey, I don't know if we're _ever_ going to find Ferin. You want to take a shot at that rock?"

_Author Note: Up to floor 10 now!_


	110. Chapter 105

**That Rock...**** Chapter 105**

It was about 9:00 pm when we made it to the little glade in the mountains where the Hermit lived. We still had guild duties to help clear on the frontline every day, so we would need to try breaking this rock at night. Approaching the old man, I simply said, "We'll try to break the rock."

Without moving from his position, sitting in a meditation, he responded, "once ye break the rock, I will teach ye all my knowledge." What kind of knowledge? I wondered. It probably didn't have anything to do with Ferin. He would have told us already, since he wanted us to find her. Well, whatever it was didn't matter as long as we could get these marks removed.

We walked over to the giant boulder together, standing for a minute as we looks up. It was much taller than us, and thicker than both of us standing slightly apart. Leaning forward, we pressed our hands against the surface. So hard. It was really durable, but not an «Immortal Object». We could break it. The question was, how long would it take? That and, how bad would it hurt?

We both took a deep breath together. Back on Earth, we would never do what we were about to do; we'd break our hands. "Hah!" punching forward with everything we had, both our right hands smashed with all of our inhuman strength against the smooth rock surface.

"Aaaah!" we both fell over sideways, rolling on the ground and holding our hands. Even if we couldn't break the bones, we could still _feel_ like we'd broken them. After a minute, the gut wrenching pain finally subsided and we stood back up slowly.

"This isn't going to be fun," Keiko noted.

"You got that right." Spreading our feet into a wider stance. A few more breaths to steady ourselves.

"Hah!" another strong punch flew into the rock's surface. Again, it felt like all the bones in my hand shattered. But, together with Keiko, I managed to stay on my feet this time. Taking a long breath, we raised our hands again. "Hah!" Still no apparent effect on the rock, just our hands again. While we could hardly move our right hands from the pain, we raised our lefts and threw another punch, sending another powerful shock to our brains as lashes of pain tore up both arms.

"Hah! Hah! Hah!" Without stopping, we just kept beating against the rock with both hands. The pain eventually reached the point where I couldn't even really comprehend it anymore. Since numbness wasn't something you could feel in this world, I guess it was the closest thing.

The pain eventually just overwhelmed my mind, and I couldn't really remember anything that happened afterward.

…

"-lo?"

"-p"

"-ei?"

"-s?"

Sounds kept penetrating into my consciousness, and I slowly came to realize that I was asleep. Fighting to wake again was like struggling to climb a cliff, directly underneath a waterfall.

"-ng?"

"-a..."

Reaching out, I almost managed to make it, but then got swept away again.

…

_Author Note: Short chapter. :(_


	111. Cheatsheet 5

—

«»

『』

#######

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

#######

exp 1551479

col 1750000

#######

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 0

STR 34

AGI 50

HP 5130

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 0

STR 34

AGI 50

HP 5130

#######

One-handed Sword 230

Sp: 550000

Sprint 175

Sp: 311000

Battle Healing 151

Sp: 233000

Dagger 230

Sp: 575000

Metal Working 193

Sp: 375500

Metal Refining 190

Sp: 365000

Tailoring 100

Sp: 101500

Cloth Refining 30

Sp: 9500

#######

# E Note

Cloth shirt 2 2 Green

Cloth skirt 2 2 Blue

Boots 2 2 Brown

Veiled Wayfinder 2 2 10S 10D – mainly black

Harmonious Convoy 2 2 10S 5D – mainly white/gray

Half-cloak 2 0 Black

Basic Army Armor 2 2

Cloth Sack 1 0 Holds things

Woodland Arrow 86 0 Arrows fired by 7th floor boss

Various Ores xx 0 for crafting with metal

Spare Clothes xx 0 dull grayish & not that well made

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was

blessed twins shard of power I 16

30% full

#######

Level chart

11 44000 220000-264000

12 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20 80000 760000-840000

21 84000 840000-924000

22 88000 924000-1012000

23 92000 1012000-1104000

24 96000 1104000-1200000

25 100000 1200000-1300000

26 104000 1300000-1404000

27 108000 1404000-1512000

28= 112000 1512000-1624000

29 116000 1624000-1740000

30 120000 1740000-1860000

#######

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

#######

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

#######

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut


	112. Chapter 106

**New Assignment**** Chapter 106**

"Mmm..." I slowly felt aware that I was conscious, my eyelids beginning to flutter open.

"Hey, one's waking up!" a young voice shouted. That was enough to snap me fully awake. At the same time, I automatically knew where Keiko was, still asleep next to me, and shifted closer putting my arms up protectively. Surveying the situation, my eyes scanned the room. There were a number of people coming toward us in the large room. There were quite a few cots set up inside as well. I recognized this room. It was in the «Black Iron Castle», the sleeping area always available to members of the army.

As I began to lower my arms, the boy who couldn't even have been as old as us sitting on an adjacent bed spoke. "You two have been out for a while. As he said that, he fought to keep a goofy grin off his face, but mostly failed. What was with that look?

Sitting for a few moments, I remembered what had happened. We'd been trying to break that rock, but I after a while, I blacked out from the pain. I couldn't remember anything after that. How had we gotten back here? And did we eventually break the rock? I reached up to touch my face, but of course I wouldn't be able to feel if the mark was still there.

"H,hey you-"

"Name's Tozaru."

I nodded. "Tozaru, do I have a big, strange looking black mark on my face?"

He tilted his head slightly. "No..." I completely missed whatever he said after that, because I was too busy raising both fists into the air.

"Yokatta!"(1) After shouting that, I slowly fell back on the bed. Looks like we managed to get the marks removed after all. While I lay there, the other men in the room finally managed to shuffle through the maze of cots to reach us. "Oh!" Snapping back up to a sitting position, I asked the lot of them, "So, how did we get here anyway?"

"Oh, that's right! Thinker told me to explain when you woke up." Tozaru started. "You didn't show up here or on the frontlines, so he searched for you with the friend finder and found you collapsed at the West Gate of «Urbus» on the second floor," he explained.

"Is that so... Can we see Thinker-san then?" I stood up from the bed, but realized that Keiko was still asleep. Leaning down, I shook her slightly. "Oi, sleepyhead, wake up," I spoke softly. It only took a few moments for Keiko's eyes to drift open.

"Good morning..." she mumbled sleepily.

"Good morning." I smiled. Even after everything that had happened, she was still always like this when she woke up. "Come on, we're going now."

"Ok..." I extended a hand and pulled her up to her feet. She stood there, still drowsy, kind of hanging on my shoulder as I turned back and asked, "So where is Thinker-san now?"

"Ah!" they all gasped, wiping the drool from their hanging mouths. What was wrong with these guys? "H,he's in his office!" Tozaru exclaimed with a lot more force than necessary.

Resisting the urge to back up a step as the younger boy shouted excitedly, I slowly answered, "Thanks..." my eyebrow twitching slightly. I glanced around, seeing that in this maze of cots, the group of guys were blocking the only floor room to get out. And it didn't look like they would be moving any time soon. So, I swept my hand under Keiko's knees and picked her up. I turned and hopped over the bed on the left, into another narrow floor path.

As I landed, I felt that something wasn't right. Like the air around me when I jumped. The way it brushed my skin... Skin...

I glanced down. "Ah hell." I was in my underwear. Setting Keiko back on her feet, now I realized why those guys were staring at us and drooling the whole time. Jeez, I can be so dense... I scolded myself as I equipped our clothes. Then I took Keiko lightly by the elbow and led her out of the room. Up to the third floor and we arrived at Thinker's office. Knocking on the door, he quickly called us inside.

"Ah, you're up. How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"Sleepy..." Keiko muttered.

I couldn't help the smile that spread on my face. "Don't mind her, she's always like this when she wakes up.

"Ah, ok then." Dropping that, he moved on. "I see you got your markes off. How did you manage it?"

"Well, the hermit that put them on gave us two options, to find the girl we were looking for, or break this huge rock with our hands. We weren't about to break that rock, so we went looking for the girl. Then we found out that the girl is hidden extremely well, and we might never find her, so we went to try and break the rock. I guess it worked, since the marks are gone..."

"You don't remember?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the pain dampener doesn't work for us... for... some reason..." I said slowly. "Anyway, we were standing there, punching a boulder repeatedly. Eventually the pain just got to be too much and I blacked out. Although, we must have broken it eventually, since we got the marks removed." After I fininshed my explanation, Thinker sat for a minute without saying anything.

"If that's the case, then you must have also walked back to town before collapsing."

"That's right, that guy said you found us collapsed at the town's gate, right?" He nodded. "Huh, I guess so then. So..." I swiped to open my menu, finding that it was shortly after 9:00 am. "How long have we been out?"

"Since I found you last night." Night... There's no way we could have broken that rock in the same night, so that meant we'd missed yesterday entirely.

"What's the date?"

"March 3rd." He stated simply. Holding up my fingers, I counted off the three days we'd been on this floor, then the day we missed, putting us at today. Yeah, the numbers worked out. At least we'd only missed one day.

"Then, should we head to the frontline now?" I asked. Before Thinker could reply, Keiko suddenly let out a loud yawn, stretching upward and releasing a high pitched 'mmmmm' sound. Once she finished the long stretch, I turned and asked, "Are you with us now?" She nodded a few times and I let everything I'd found out flow through the bond to catch her up in a moment.

"Ah, so that's how it is..." she said slowly.

"Well, regarding your last question, there's something else I need you to do for now. Not that I want to take you away from the clearing group, but there are middle level players who are having some trouble progressing and they could use your help."

"Sure, we'll do what we can," Keiko answered.

"Just tell us where we're going," I grinned.

_Author Note: I totally didn't realize that there is no February 30__th__. Fixed that now. Btw, exactly 100 favs and follows. ^_^_

(1) The exact meaning doesn't really translate well. – Generally means 'alright', 'thank goodness', 'awesome', etc.


	113. Chapter 107

**Angrish**** Chapter 107**

_Author Note: Weird, I always thought it was a 'g'. Guess I was just mishearing it. o_O Thanks for the correction, everyone. Also, you'll get the joke in the title if you've read tvtropes._

From a large tree trunk, its roots spreading in all directions before they even touched the ground, we appeared on the third floor in «Serof». The tree was this floor's «Teleport Gate», the many roots creating a space with the hazy blue disturbance in air which indicated the gate was active. As the light vanished around us, we both glanced around the plaza. Thinker had sent a message to the mid-level members we were here to help out, instructing them to return to «Serof» to meet us. Looking around, I didn't see them anywhere.

Then again, it would take them a lot longer to get back from wherever they were hunting than it would for us to walk the few blocks to the first floor's «Teleport Gate». While waiting, we walked over to a nearby shop and bought some bread. Returning to the plaza, we sat and ate slowly. There were very few other people around, since most were out hunting already. After a while, we finished our meal and continued waiting. Thankfully, they appeared on the road leading to the plaza after just a few more minutes, easily identifiable by their standard issue armor.

At this distance, and in the shade of so many trees, there was no way they could see us yet. Unable to wait any longer, we got up from the bench and jogged toward the group. There were four of them, all men. They seemed to be in their twenties. When we had moved close enough, we raised our hands and waved. The group stopped, all looking right at us. We both slowed, then came to a stop before them.

"Hey, Thinker-san sent us to help you." They continued staring at us for a few seconds, blinking a couple times.

Then, "He sent _you_ to help _us_?" one man asked slowly. We nodded. "Help us with _what_ exactly?"

"Well, we aren't really sure. He didn't know exactly what you are doing, but figured you were trying to clear a side-dungeon," Keiko explained what little information Thinker had given us to go with the assignment. "Apparently you asked your captain for some help?" If I remembered correctly, the captain of their squad was a woman named Yulier. The name stuck in my head because it sounded vaguely familiar, though I couldn't remember why. She was pretty high ranked, not far behind us- according to Thinker.

"Uh huh... That's what we're doing, and we are having trouble. But... how are _you_ going to help?" another, this one with hair dyed green, asked. That response actually made me think.

"Well, it wouldn't be good to fight that much, since we'd be stealing all your Exp... So we'll probably just offer tips and intervene if things look dangerous. I'm also unnaturally good at holding mob aggro..." I mumbled the last part. Strangely, my answer didn't end their one-sided staring contest.

"If you're really here to help us, why are you dressed like you're going to a picnic...?" the tallest asked.

"Ah, that? Well... How to explain..." I wasn't sure how to say it.

"It's just that the armor is uncomfortable, so we only wear it when things get dangerous," Keiko covered for me. "Though that usually just means during Boss Raids." That last part made them all jump back.

"You're frontliners!?" they exclaimed together. We both nodded, confused by their shock. Why wouldn't we be frontliners? Who else would Thinker send if he was having trouble bringing the mid-levels up? We didn't really have much between the frontline and these guys here, so of course he would pull some clearers for it.

"I would never imagine cute little girls like them to be frontliners..." one muttered. The others nodded and whispered in agreement.

"We're right here you know, we can hear you..." Keiko grumbled.

"Can we get going already? It's pretty la-"

"So you guys are actually really strong?" one of the men spoke over me.

"Yes we ar-" I answered, my eyebrow twitching when they cut me off again.

"Aww, she's so cute..." all of them cooed.

"Can we just get-"

"And her face is starting to get red too," three went on.

"But doesn't she look kind of angry?" the last asked.

"That's because I am angry!" I shouted, waving my arms frantically as Keiko grabbed me from behind so I wouldn't throw myself at them.

"She's even cute when she's angry..." they all stood staring at me.

…

"Keep looking forward!" I snapped when one of them started to look backward at us. We were making our way through a forest maze, apparently a mini-dungeon which they had been trying to clear. It was on the regular floor level, but the trees grew thick enough on all sides to completely block anyone trying to enter (much like the eighth floor dungeon) except through the main entrance, which was quite a ways behind us now.

As we entered a small clearing they stopped. We both walked up alongside them, looking ahead. Sitting right in the middle of the path which led out the other end of this space was a giant monster. It looked like some kind of flower, with a huge mouth and numerous vine-like things spreading out to both sides. "So, that's the monster you've been stuck on?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's really tough and we just can't manage to kill it. But it'll be ok because you're here now!"

"Right..." I looked over at the monster. It was really big and looked like it could take a lot of hits. On the other hand, its vines weren't particularly sharp. So, a big defensive mob, probably with low attack. Although, it did have that huge mouth, and those teeth looked like they could do some damage. With a group like this, the best plan would probably be to move in slowly and form a ring around on both sides. Although, I didn't know if it had any wide area attacks it might use if they tried surrounding it like tha-

"Charge!" they all shouted, their weapons raised high as they sprinted forward with everything they had.

My jaw dropped. I swear my heart skipped a beat. "What the hell are you guys-"

_Chomp... munch munch...munch munch... pweh._ After the giant plant spit out the group of four it was chewing on, they all quickly retreated back toward us with their hp in the yellow zone. I stood there, staring at them for a minute.

"What... What was that exactly?"

"...Sorry, we were trying to impress the cute little leaders..." a few of them said together.

Standing there unable to form words, my eyebrow twitched slightly.

"Uh oh, she's angry again," one noted.

…

"She's still cute when she's angry..." they all swooned. Unable to contain myself anymore, I took a deep breath.

" !*)%s#!DFA %#!&GDFSF*%DKU%&*(LOY^&*HQOIUT )^%${PHY! O(KUIO*( "


	114. Chapter 108

**Fighting Men and Mobs**** Chapter 108**

_Author Note: I'm sorry, I thought I'd explained earlier, but I guess I forgot. Back the first time Kayaba debugged their characters, he turned Rei's ethics code back on. I rewrote that bit in chapter 46 to make it more clear. orz_

_ I don't know if I'll bring the ethics code up again. I don't have this story rated at M, so I'm not really sure what's fair game or not._

What is wrong with these guys... I wondered to myself as we kept walking. Once I'd managed to straighten them out a bit, they really weren't that bad. With a bit of help, they even defeated the large plant monster they were stuck on. But now that we'd gotten past the dangerous part, they'd turned back into swooning idiots... Even as we walked, they were hopping around, singing 'we have cute commanders, we have cute commanders...' over and over again...

I lowered my face for a moment, and one of them said, "Ooh look, she's embarrassed!"

"Aaaawwww~" I started to look back up when they said that.

_Pinch_. I came to a halt as one pinched my cheeks, stretching to the sides as the others looked on laughing.

"Haha she's embarrassed~" the blond haired man said.

"I,I'm not embarrassed," I argued, though my voice didn't come out as strong as I wanted. In the corner of my vision a small popup appeared, reading: 『Ethics Code Violation: Inappropriate Touching. Send to Jail?』As it said, if I pressed the button, it would teleport him straight to the prison section of the «Black Iron Castle». Of course we could go and get him out later, but he was a member of the army and I was here to help these guys, so that would be a bad idea. However...

"I'm not embarrassed, I'm angry!" I shouted this time, sending a punch straight into his gut.

"Guh!" with a gasp, he flew backward, a dozen meters down the path before he hit the ground and rolled all the way into a tree where the path turned next. It was just a guess, but I figured that since he was already breaking the ethics code by touching me, I'd be allowed to hit him to get him off. "I'm not orange now, am I?" I asked Keiko quietly. She shook her head, though her shocked kind of blank look was for some other reason. "What is it?"

"When you punched him, your attack lit up like a sword skill."

"Huh?" my anger evaporating, even as the rest of the group ran down the path shouting if he was ok. We both stood there as everyone ran off, confused by what had just happened. I raised my hand again and threw a punch. Nothing. We both blinked at my hand. So, I tried putting some effort behind it and threw a much stronger punch. There! I saw it myself that time. A faint reddish effect around my hand.

We swiped open our menus and changed to the basic skills tab. Immediately, something stuck out on the otherwise familiar list. 『Martial Arts』. "When did we get this skill?" Keiko asked aloud. It even had a skill slot for itself, just like «Blessed Twins». Unlike all the others, this one had a sort of silver outline, compared to the normal blue or a normal skill slot, and the yellowy gold of «Blessed Twins».

"What could we have done recently to get a skill like this?" I asked aloud.

…

We both stared at each other for a second. The answer was too obvious.

"Really? So that old hermit's quest and the whole 'break the giant boulder' thing was to get an extra skill?!" we both exclaimed together. Though we'd met him for an entirely different purpose, that must have been what he was there for, since he _had_ had a golden quest symbol above his head the whole time...

"That must have been why Argo-san wanted a hundred thousand Col when we mentioned him, because he could teach a new skill... No wonder why he was hidden away so far in the mountains..." While we stood there blankly, everything we'd never really understood sliding neatly into place, the rest of the group returned, dragging their wounded counterpart. Well, emotionally wounded by the looks of him.

And by that, I mean the fact that he had big tears streaming down his face and was crying that I hated him. At this point, I couldn't even really get angry anymore. "Let's just go." My strange change in temperament seemed to alert them all to something, and they followed along obediently. As we walked, everything we'd figured out set in, and I got past the shocked state I was in by the time we found the next group of monsters blocking the path.

There were all these little spiders ahead. Well, only little compared to everything else in this world. Each one was about as tall as my knees and nearly a meter wide. I couldn't count just how many with them all scurrying around, but they didn't look particularly strong. Even so, I couldn't help the shiver that ran up my spine. Most animal based mobs were fine, but spiders were just sooo creepy...

I heard Keiko snicker slightly before asking, "Have you fought these before?" She wasn't freaked out by creepy things like I was. Go figure. The group nodded, then lifted their weapons high into the air.

"Charge! We get to look good this time!" Like before, they charged forward with reckless abandon. Only this time, they quickly crushed the stupid spiders and returned with big grins on their faces. "Did the cute little leaders see? We beat 'em good."

I let out a slow breath, glad that those spiders were gone. "Yeah, good job." I realized my mistake as soon as the words left my mouth.

"She's wonderful when she's praising us!"

"No! Stop touching me!"

"She's even cuter when she's embarrassed!"

"I am not embarrassed!"

_Crack._

_Author Note: Probably not going to update this weekend, I'll be spending nearly all my free time playing the Defiance Beta._


	115. Chapter 109

**Feelings**** Chapter 109**

_Author Note: Well, some weirdness happened... And now I have a long time with nothing to do. So here's another chapter! XD_

The rest of the day went much the same way, with all of them swooning over us (or rather me, since Keiko stayed quiet the whole time). On the other hand, it wasn't all bad. We actually made it quite a ways through the dungeon. Well, thinking about it afterward, it shouldn't even be considered that, since we could send and receive messages inside.

But anyway, the day ended without any problems, and we all set off for town. At the «Teleport Gate», we parted ways. They said they were going back to the «Black Iron Castle», and we headed to our inn room on the eighth floor to pick up our «Vendor's Carpet». Carrying the metal tube as tall as me, we teleported again to the tenth floor, now busy and teeming with frontliners. They were all going around, doing whatever they needed to keep all their gear in order.

While I sat and continued making blank clothes to increase our skill level, Keiko tended to any customers who appeared. While we both worked, I could feel her mind kind of glowing in a happy way, almost like she was humming. I on the other hand, tried to keep my mind blank. There was something I didn't want to think about right now, because she would realize if I allowed it to move to the front of my thoughts. So, I just kept pushing it away for now.

The night moved on, the moon rose past this floor, and the crowds slowly disappeared for bed. When nearly everyone else had gone, we packed up and headed off too. A short trip down to our inn room and we settled in for the night. As tired as I was from the long day, while I lay there with Keiko's steady breathing resounding through the little room, I didn't fall asleep. Instead, I waited for a while, until I was sure she was no longer awake, and quietly slid out of bed.

Standing quietly in the dark room, I looked across at the mirror on the wall. Reflected in it was a fourteen year old girl, with blond hair falling all the way to her butt, dressed in nothing but her underwear. Why then, did I only see 'me'? Turning away from the reflected image, I shuffled out of the room while dressing myself with a few quick movements. Walking outside, I leaned against the wall of the inn. As I stood, staring ahead, I slowly slid to the ground.

Sitting there for some time, I looked up at the sky, but I couldn't see it. Just the next floor above this one. "I want to reach the one hundredth floor so I can see the sky again..." I thought aloud. "No! I want to get there so I can return home! Back to my own body!" Curling up, I pressed my head to my knees, trying to stop the tears running down my face of their own will. "Why am I crying! I don't want to cry! It's the last thing I want to do right now!" And yet, the dampness running down my cheeks and falling on my clothes didn't stop.

"**Hello pretty girl.**(English) What are you doing outside alone at a time like this?" I looked up when I heard someone talking to me. I couldn't even make out his face through the exaggerated tears. "What's wrong? You're crying," he said, as if I didn't know that already. "You can't do that, it'll ruin your pretty face," he spoke in a soothing tone while kneeling down in front of me. However, something he said made me stop for a moment. And then-

"DON'T CALL ME PRETTY!" I screamed, my leg kicking up right between his legs. He fell over backward and I threw myself on top of him, swinging both of my balled up fists down repeatedly as he held his arms in front to defend himself, even though all my attacks were blocked by the anti-criminal code. As I continued swinging, I eventually realized that we were in town and none of my blows would land. As I slowed down, the man suddenly caught both of my wrists mid-swing.

Staring straight down, I could see his face now covered with my tears. However, just that wasn't enough to keep him from being immediately recognizable. "Ku,Ku,Ku,Ku,Ku,Ku,Ku..." As we stayed in that position for a minute, even with my tears still running down my face and falling onto his, the first syllable of his name stuttered out of my throat over and over again.

"Klein!?" My eyes went wide, shock finally stopping my crying.

"Long time no see?" he offered.

…

Of course, he insisted I tell him what was wrong after that, and we started walking. I tried collecting my thoughts for a while, not sure exactly how to explain what was wrong, and before I knew it, I fell to the ground. "What's wrong?" he asked, obviously confused by me suddenly collapsing.

"Ah, I can't walk any farther. It's a passive skill I have that keeps me from moving too far from... Rai," I remembered to use her character name. "My stats decrease the farther I go, and eventually I don't have enough Strength to move under my own weight," I explained blankly, even as my thoughts were elsewhere.

"Well, if that's the case..." He crouched down in front of me, and I felt my body stiffen when his hands touched my butt. "Yoisho!"(1) He stood quickly while he said that, and I threw my arms around his neck to keep my balance as he hefted me up onto his back. With that, he started walking. After a little while, I let out a slow breath and my tense muscles loosened. My head fell forward and I leaned my chin on Klein's shoulder. "So, what's so wrong that you're outside, crying alone?" He asked.

I stayed quiet for another minute. "Well..." Still unsure of how to explain. Then, I just started speaking. "We got grouped up with these guys today, and they were all fawning over me. I should have just ignored them, but I couldn't. I guess I hadn't really noticed up until now, because we're usually alone... but it actually made me... like... flustered... Like, I just couldn't keep my cool for some reason..." If I just kept talking, surely I'd be able to make him understand what I was trying to say. "It made me think that maybe being in this body is starting to get to me. Isn't it like you said when we first met? It isn't healthy to spend a long time in a body of another gender... I feel like the longer this goes on, the worse it will get."

"So, you're worried that you're going to be a girl by the time this is all over." After a moment, as if admitting it to myself, I nodded.

"I mean, I'm having trouble now. We're on the tenth floor. When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't see a girl anymore, I see myself. It makes me feel like there won't be anything left of the old me by the time we reach the top. But, I can't let that happen. I have to be a boy, I have to protect my sister, no matter what happens." After I slowly spoke these words, softly so they would only reach Klein's ears, I was quiet. I didn't really know what else I could say. Looking straight ahead, the tall, young man with his signature bandana continued walking through the empty streets.

…

Klein walked around with me on this back for a while. It was comfortable, and eventually I found myself relaxing again, finally able to let out this anxiety I had inside. It was late, and the mixture of relief and fatigue slowly made me grow sleepy. As I started to nod off, I felt Klein stop. Picking my head back up from his shoulder, I looked around, to see that we were outside my inn again. Klein set me down and turned around.

"Well, I see what you mean. There's not much I can do to help, but..." Without warning-

_Chuu._ He leaned in and kissed me. Freaking out, I lurched backward, tripping over myself and falling to the ground as I scrambled back. Then, I started spitting into the dirt and wiping my arm across my lips. "What the hell?!" I shouted.

"If you don't like kissing me, you aren't a woman yet." He gave me a big smirk and a thumbs up, then turned and walked off, sending a casual, "see ya," over his shoulder. I stared after him for a minute as he moved far down the road. When he should have been far enough away to no longer be seen or heard, he suddenly turned sideways and started spitting repeatedly into the ground.

"Bleh... The things I do for my friends..." With my keen ears, I could just hear what he was saying. "But why are all my friends so depressed!?" He rubbed his arm over his mouth repeatedly. "And why do they all have cute little sisters...?" With that, he continued walking.

I could only sigh slightly as I got back to my feet. I really wasn't sure if that had helped or not, but at least I felt a little better now... Maybe. Sighing again, I opened the inn door and walked back inside.

_Author Note: Hope it didn't seem too sudden, this has kind of been due for a while now._

(1) Generally used when picking things up. (Thanks ChromaLuke)


	116. Chapter 110

**That Moment When it All Makes Sense**** Chapter 110**

The following day, I suddenly woke with Keiko shaking me and shouting "ONII-CHAAANNN!"

"Uwaaa! What is it? I'm awake!"

"Jeez, it's about time! I've been trying to wake you up for ten minutes, idiot..." she sighed.

"Ah, sorry, sorry." I usually woke up first, but I'd probably gone to bed a number of hours after her last night, so it was no surprise that when she finally managed to get me up, I felt like a ton of bricks. "Urgh..." I grumbled, rubbing my eyes sleepily as we set out for the day. We were a couple minutes later than usual, but it wasn't much of an issue, since we were usually so early. Warping down to the first floor again, we headed over to the guild base and arrived at Thinker's office right around 7:00 am.

To keep my mind off last night while we walked, I directed my thoughts to the frontline, wondering if they'd gotten into the dungeon yesterday. We'd been on the floor for five days now, so we really should have gotten in, but word was that the puzzle was ridiculously difficult. It must be, if it was taking the smartest people trapped here so many days just to solve the one puzzle.

It was about then that we arrived outside Thinker's office, and I let that trail of meaningless thought go as Keiko knocked on the wooden door. "Come in." We both looked at each other for a moment. No matter how you looked at it, that was a woman's voice just now. Hesitatingly, we opened the double doors and entered the office. Standing in the middle of the room, turned halfway around was a woman in her twenties. Her biggest feature (besides being female) was her gray hair. Gray, a color I hadn't really seen. Was it natural? I wasn't aware of a dye to turn hair that color existing in this world.

Shaking those thoughts from my mind, I glanced over.『Yulier』, her cursor read. That name rang a bell. The... "...captain of those guys from yesterday..." I said slowly as the thought went through my mind.

"Oh? Good guess." She said, her eyebrows raising in surprise.

"No, I remember your name," I pointed out.

"My name? But, we haven't met before, have we?" she asked. I put my hand to my chin, thinking deeply. There were hardly any women in this world, so when did we meet this one?

"I can't remember, but we have met you before..." Keiko said, drawing a blank too. We must have met her very briefly, or very long ago to not remember her. Maybe it was both...

"A,anyway, we came to ask about our next assignment," I moved on to the next subject.

Thinker opened his mouth, then shut it again, as if thinking. "Well, Yulier-san here actually just came with a request concerning you two," Thinker explained, raising his hand to indicate she should go on.

The gray haired woman bowed slightly before continuing where he left off. "The seventh squad in my division requested you two accompany them today.

Don't tell me... "they're the ones from yesterday?" I continued the rest of the thought aloud. Yulier nodded. "Refused!" I answered immediately, crossing my arms in a big X.

"Eeehhh?" suddenly a chorus of voices cried out as the door behind us crashed open. I spun around to find, of course, the four men from yesterday. "Why not?! They all called together.

"What are you guys doing?!" Yulier exclaimed at the same time.

"Why can't they help us out again?" they all asked together.

"If they did, we'd definitely get through the dungeon today!" one actually launched an actual reason into this mess. That managed to quiet everyone down slightly. Thinker turned to us, clearly expecting an answer to the claim.

"W,wouldn't we be better off doing something else? Like clearing..." Right, the dungeon probably wasn't open yet. "...or smithing? I mean..." grasping at straws, I glanced around frantically. "I mean, just look at him!" I pointed accusingly at one of the men. "Look at his sword! That's obviously not player made, and doesn't even look as good as a boss drop!"

"What's wrong with my sword?! It doesn't look like much but its not bad! I got it at an NPC shop, but they had pretty good gear there. That, and the shopkeeper was cute, even if she was kind of angry and didn't talk that much..." As his rebuttal veered into 'too much information' territory, something in his words made both Keiko and I stop.

_That shopkeeper was cute... pretty good gear there...didn't talk much... kind of cute... NPC shop... pretty good gear... cute... didn't talk much... NPC shop..._

—These phrases swirled around in my head over and over, mixing up and forming together as they all prodded at some long distant memory. I closed my eyes, even the words hey what's wrong hit my ears. My brain didn't even process them as it whirled over and over around those phrases...

My eyes flashed open. I slowly turned to look at Keiko. Staring straight at each other for a few moments, our mouths wide open in shock, I felt a shock run up my entire body, even causing my eyes to tear up a bit. It was that incredible, powerful feeling like goosebumps all over that get when you realize something crazy. That moment of absolute epiphany.

**_"THAT'S WHERE SHE IS!"_** we screamed.

_Author Note: Well, that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed the numerous chapters before the break. Well, except that cliffhanger... XP_


	117. Chapter 111

**Ferin**** Chapter 111**

_Author's Note: For those who have forgotten (as I was hoping- to make it a surprise), Ferin appeared in chapters 37,41, and 42. Her name was written a total of five times. XD_

After letting that scream out, the whole room was quiet for a few seconds as we continued to stare at each other. Overwhelmed by the sudden realization, we both opened our mouths. "Waaaaaaaa!" with that incoherent sound, we flailed around for a few moments as we looked all around trying to figure out what to actually do next. Then, without warning, we sprung sideways, over the heap of men lying in the doorway, out into the hall, and threw ourselves right out the window.

"Where are you going?!" That cry rang out from six voices behind as we kicked away from the side of the castle. Landing with a roll to reduce the impact, we ran off, sprinting as fast as we possibly could. Without so much as consulting the map, we turned through the city and struck out into the fields. Unarmed, unarmored, we ran as fast as possible, directly toward the towering column which rose into the floor above.

—Finally, the girl we've been searching for, for the last month and a half. We're finally going to find her. As these sorts of thoughts resounded in both of our minds, a scene replayed itself behind my eyes.

_As the boy had said, the name under her health bar read __『__Ferin__』__. She pulled a sword out from the big furnace and laid it on the anvil next to her. Then, she grabbed one of the pieces of leather off the top of the pile with one hand and our jaws dropped. She really was a lot stronger than she looked._

_ This NPC, Ferin, was short, skinny, and frail looking. I just had to sigh at that. Then, out of curiosity, I asked, "What do you have for sale?" She looked up at me for a moment, but unlike every other shop NPC I'd seen, didn't say anything. Instead, she just nodded._

_ I set the shop window to only show one-handed swords. There were a few, and I brought up their stats to compare with my current «Wolf-Tooth Sword +7». The stats on the shop weapons were really good, but still lower than my current sword by a tiny margin. _

_ "Wow, these weapons are on par with the «Anneal Blade» everyone wants," I noted to Keiko._

This scene, from the first time we met Ferin, way back near the time we cleared the first floor in early December, played through my mind as we ran. Fast, so much faster than should be possible, we crossed the huge landscape of the first floor, blowing through any mobs in our paths without mercy as we tore through the South gate of «Tolbana». It used to be the base of operations for the clearers, back when we were all new and it took a full month just to clear the floor.

Even as those nostalgic thoughts came back, I brushed them aside and tore straight through the streets which held a couple newer adventurers. Not even bothering to go around, we leaped straight from the side of the Colosseum which served as the centerpiece of the town, landing halfway up the other side. Two more powerful jumps and we cleared the top, again sprinting full speed through the wide streets. The few people who were around made sure to clear the way as we burst past.

A short number of minutes since leaving the «Black Iron Castle», we stood all the way at the North gate of «Tolbana», coming to a stop a short distance in front of a simple, gray, unattractive building, not noteworthy in any way whatsoever. Even with all her scouts, Argo must have missed this building, due to it simply being so completely normal. Slowly now, with our anticipation building with every step, we approached the closed wooden door.

Standing there for a few moments, we gulped. Almost as if we were anxious, worried that after all this time, she wouldn't be here anymore. My hand stretched out, taking the round door handle and turning. The bolt slid in, and I pushed the door inward. Heat gushed out, as if being breathed out by a giant monster. It was a familiar and comforting heat, the heat of a forge. We proceeded into the dark, orange-tinted single room building, closing the door behind us.

And standing right there in front of the large furnace which dyed the inside in its fiery color was a girl. Thin, even to the point of frail, she wielded much greater strength than her looks told of, as she easily manipulated the huge two-handed blade in her hands. The girl was young, not quite an adult yet, with a pretty face and silky auburn hair, tied off with a piece of cloth near the end so that it all stayed at her back. Her green cursor appeared, with her health bar a little to the side. And her name.

『Ferin』.

We approached the girl, whose head swung to look at us as we entered. Staring at us, her hands stopped moving as we stood there. After all this time, I wasn't even sure what to say... Keiko seemed to be in the same position, and we all stood there, staring at each other for a while, until I finally managed to clear my throat. "So... You're... Ferin..." Ok, still not getting anywhere with this...

"We've been looking for you," Keiko said. However, Ferin just kept looking at us blankly, tilting her head in confusion.

"Your mother, Fiona, sent us to find you," I explained. Still nothing. Most NPCs at least had a shine in their eyes, even the normal ones, which made them look more thoughtful. However, Ferin had no such thing, her gaze was perfectly blank. Thinking about it now, wasn't this the most basic NPC we'd ever met? Back at that time, I'd discovered that she could only nod when we asked a question, even if 'yes' wasn't the answer to the question.

"What should we do?" I asked, "we came all this way, but it's like there's nothing in there, like she's just a shell..." As we stood there, Keiko opened her mouth a few times, but slowly closed it again each time.

Then, "Can you tell us about the 'time before'?" Keiko asked straight out. Ferin nodded that blank nod of hers, but, there was something else there. Like, the curve of her lips changed somehow.

"Can you speak? To tell us?" I asked. Another nod, but this time, there seemed to be a flicker of something in her eyes. "What about your mother? What about the memories she gave you?" Another flicker. Her eyes were growing brighter, as if awakening her consciousness inside the sleeping shell of her body. Just a little more to go.

"Ferin. We want to know about how you got here, what you remember, and how this world came to be." Keiko spoke slowly, deliberately, and finally, Ferin's eyes widened with a sort of realization. Then, she began to move.

Her hands releasing the sword in her hand, it clattered onto the counter next to her. Her hands came up, hovering near her head as she spread her fingers and made a classic 'claws' expression with her hands. At the same time, she opened her mouth in a way to show all her teeth. Overall, she had to be saying 'scary monsters'.

We both said as much, and she nodded. Then, she put her hand up to her head, making a tightly gripped fist for a moment, then pulling her hand away. She repeated the gesture over her mouth, then her heart. "Monsters took your memories, voice, and heart..." Keiko said slowly. Ferin nodded, but the light in her eyes was quickly fading again.

Just before her true consciousness vanished again, I gasped out, "We want to help you! How can we get them back?" That seemed to rekindle her weakening spirit. A smile spread across her face, and she held her hands clasped together at her chest. Her eyes closed for a few moments, and I could feel that she was focusing hard. Her eyebrows drew together with effort, but after a few moments, she stopped. Her eyes reopened and she looked at us pleadingly.

"What do you need?" Keiko asked. She seemed to be unable to do whatever she was trying to do. Did we have whatever she could need with us right now? Ferin held both hands up, making a kind of flicking gesture upward with all her fingers.

Like a... "puff..." I said while repeating the gesture. She shook her head desperately. Then, she held both hands out, her fingers splayed out, slightly curved, in a way that I recognized. Wizard? That look was like a wizard in a movie, or something like that when they cast a spell... Wizard wizard wizard-

"Magic?" Keiko made the connection I was missing. Ferin nodded emphatically, even as her consciousness seemed to be fading again. Her hands held out, like she was asking for us to give her some. Give her magic? How were we supposed to do that?

"Uwaa that's right!" I gasped. Swiping open my menu, I retrieved one of the «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I's» from our inventory as fast as I could and handed it over. Ferin then held it up to her chest, clasping her hands tightly and closing her eyes.

The in a moment, the shard began to glow. Suddenly it let out a bright flash of light and we had to turn away from the blinding brightness. It only lasted a moment before vanishing completely. When we turned back, both our jaws dropped. Because Ferin had vanished too.

"Wait, that's not right," I gasped. My hand stretched out for something. It was like there was a little shiny thing, hanging in midair. After a moment, it seemed that gravity caught it, and the little object started to fall. When I saw it, I threw myself forward. A little thing like that probably wouldn't survive hitting the ground when dropped from that height. I didn't know why, but I had a feeling like I definitely had to catch it.

So, I threw my whole body forward, crashing over the anvil in front of me and diving face-first into the floor as my hand just barely swept underneath the little object before it struck the hard ground. I closed my hand around the object, to ensure it was safe and I wouldn't drop it, while Keiko grabbed my back and pulled me back up from my position hanging awkwardly over the heavy metal object on the floor.

Standing upright again, I rubbed my sore face for a minute before opening my hand and examining the strange thing I'd just caught. It was a little round object, a perfect sphere. It was colored a light blue, like the sky at midday, though it was just a little bit transparent as well. About three or four centimeters across, it took up about half of my palm's width. Strangely, it had a kind of warm feeling, and the strange, almost buzzing kind of sensation in my palm told me something unexpected. It had some magic in it. That must mean it was some sort of crystal.

Tapping the crystal, a little window appeared in midair. Both leaning in to look at it, we stopped, finding ourselves staring. I don't know how long we stayed that way, because the item's window contained no description. Just a name.

『Ferin』.


	118. Chapter 112

**On the Trail**** Chapter 112**

We stood there for a minute. Why was this crystal named Ferin, and where did the real Ferin go? While we were both confused, I suddenly felt something. It was a perfectly familiar feeling, just like my bond with Keiko. But at the same time, different somehow. It was hazy and lacked definition, like back when we had just gotten the «Blessed Twins» skill. The unclear sensation didn't come like words, as we usually did now, but as a sort of understanding, like we used to do.

This strange understanding which came to me told me a few things. Ferin had used the magic in the shard we gave her to transform herself into this crystal. It wasn't like I was being told this, it was more like the fact was placed directly into my mind. There was no arguing or not believing it. It was a simple fact, as if I'd known the whole time.

She had become a crystal because her human form only acted as a cage now. I sent these things I learned to Keiko. Her eyebrows pulled together, wondering how I knew these things all of a sudden. It must be the crystal, I realized. Holding it allowed Ferin to 'talk' to me. I passed the little object to my sister and her eyes widened. Though the bond, I felt the next thing Ferin had explained. In this form, she would be able to help us find the rest of her, which had been stolen.

Following that, we just got one thing: Southwest, and up. That seemed to be all from the strange crystallized Ferin. "Looks like we still have more to do," I noted. Keiko nodded seriously. We left the now empty shop, the greatsword Ferin had been working on lying across the counter half finished. "Where should we put... it? Err, her?" I wasn't sure what to call the crystal. It was Ferin, but also an object. Then again, Ferin was an NPC, so technically she was already an object... Then, why didn't she feel like one?"

"Ah..." Keiko was indecisive for a minute herself. "I'd say 'her'. We've been looking for her for so long, it would be kind of... disrespectful- to demote her to an object now." I nodded thoughtfully. That made sense, so I'd stick to it as well.

"Then, where to now?" All we had right now was a direction.

"Well, I guess we just start searching. Since it's upward, it has to be on a higher floor." Keiko reasoned. With that, we set off for the «Teleport Gate», so we could move to the higher floors. However, we didn't dare run while just holding Ferin in our hands. We had to figure out some way to keep her safe...

"I've got it!" I suddenly thought of the perfect spot. She was a crystal now, so I I took out my sword and placed her into the hole in the middle of the handle which could hold crystals. With a flash, the whole blade changed, just like it had with the «Navigation Crystal». Only this time, it didn't turn a silvery white. Instead, it changed into a glowing blueish white, the glow of color, a kind of iridescence flowing up the blade. "It looks different than before..." I opened the information window to see if anything else had changed, and had to smile. The name had changed completely this time.

『Blade of Ferin』. Looking at that name, I slid my sword back into its unassuming brown leather sheath again. She would be more than safe now. "Now, let's go." From there, we dashed back to the «Starting City», and warped up to the second floor. Stepping out of the teleport gate, I started to reach of the crystal when she 'spoke' again. It seemed like my sword even boosted the strength, because I could feel her instructions more clearly this time, even without actually holding the crystal. North. Up.

We repeated the process, up to the third floor, the fourth, and the fifth, until her instructions finally changed. In the the fifth floor main town «Reu», her only direction was North. So, we set off. We hadn't done much on the fifth floor before, since we'd spent most of the time crafting while this floor was being cleared.

As we ran, we both looked around to get an idea of the landscape. It was a desert area, sand in every direction, with a handful of hard, rocky hills here and there. There wasn't much in the way of plants or animals, and the only things we saw were the various sorts of big lizards which inhabited the floor. Ignoring all of that, we continued on for a bit, until we figured we were near the north end of the floor.

I touched the hilt of my sword, thinking that we needed another direction, and Ferin answered right away. Northeast. After consulting the map, we set off in that direction.

_Close._ I could feel the thought through my sword. The place we were looking for was around here somewhere. We continued following her directions, heading North, East, West, any way she directed as we closed in on the place. And finally, we topped one more sand dune, finding exactly what we were looking for. Ok, well, it wasn't really what we were looking for. It was a cave. But it would definitely have what we were looking for inside it.

We jogged down the dune and approached the cave entrance, but I noticed something as we drew close. At the opening, there was a strange haziness in the air. "No way..." I mumbled quietly.

We walked right up to it and I stretched my hand out. My palm touched a solid surface- it was a magical barrier.


	119. Chapter 113

**To Open the Way...**** Chapter 113**

_Author Note: Ugh, I feel like the last two days have been a complete waste of my life... at least I can continue writing now._

_ Also, Jman12394, we think alike. :3_

With the magical barrier blocking us from going forward, we both thought for a minute. Then, Keiko had an idea. She pulled the «Control Crystal» from our inventory and held it up. "Transform!" She shouted the command, trying to move the barrier aside, but nothing appeared to happen. "Didn't think it would be so easy..." she grumbled while stashing it away again.

"So, there has to be a clue around here somewhere that tells how to disable that barrier," I figured. Well, if it was even possible to disable... We both spread out to look, but I hardly had time to start searching before Keiko called out that she found something. "Figures," I chuckled. Jogging over to where she was around the right side of the entrance, she pointed down to something on the ground. I leaned down to get a closer look.

It was some sort of stone thing with eight sides. The first set of four slanted outward as they came up, while the other set moved back in to a point at the top. However, each of the four uppermost sides had a round depression in them, like a part had been cut out. This whole jewel-like piece which was a little bigger than one of my hands rested atop a little pillar of stone which continued down into the sand.

"Well, it's certainly _something_," I said as I stared at it, "Let's dig it out to get a better look," Keiko nodded, and we got to digging. Since it was sand, that basically just meant pulling all the sand away to clear the area. Still, there was a lot of sand, and it took nearly a half hour before we hit stone underneath. Taking a step back, we looked at the cleared area, seeing what it really was for the first time. It looked like some sort of ritual site. The stone beneath us wasn't rocky ground, but a man-made floor. It was decorated with many intricate carvings all around the stone post standing in the center.

But that wasn't all of it. Besides carvings, there were also words inscribed. Blowing away the little sand which remained at my feet, I slowly read what was written but couldn't make any sense of it. I'd probably need to start from somewhere in particular. Moving counter-clockwise around the circle, I glanced around, reading bits here and there. Without context, it all sounded like gibberish. Then, I hit a line. A big line running straight through the center of the circle. Backing up again, I glanced across to see that two big lines subdivided the whole circle into four equal sections.

Looking to the top right corner of the section beneath my feet, I started to read down.(1)

『The second of the four...』 Second? I moved to the next quarter circle to the right and started again. 『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

Reaching the end of this segment of inscription, I thought about it for a few seconds before sighing. All of the cryptic descriptions and instructions aside, the very beginning at least explained that we would need to search for four orbs to get past this barrier. Not to mention the list of trials which would surely go with each one. Hell, the first one alone sounded crazy, what would the rest involve?

"So, what now?" I asked. Keiko took a minute to read the inscription I'd just gone over, and I reread it at the same time.

"I guess we just go, since we kind of ditched on the army today..." she stuck her tongue out and made a silly face after that one. I nodded, then thought of something.

"Wait, let's copy this down, I don't want to forget part of it later," I pointed out. Since we didn't have any paper on us or anything, we pulled up our friend lists and both sent each other the whole thing. It took a while to copy it all, but we got it done and set off for town. In case we wouldn't be able to look at messages once there, we meant to pick up some paper in town to copy the instructions down when we got there.

"Sorry Ferin, looks like it's going to take a while to get your memories back," I said quietly to the crystal resting in the sword at my waist.

(1) Japanese reads top to bottom, right to left.


	120. Chapter 114

**The First Riddle: The Far Land and The Great Pyramid**** Chapter 114**

"So..."

"So..."

"Hmm..."

"Mmm..."

We sat side by side on a randomly selected bench in the sixth floor's main town «Pala» (as opposed to the small town «Regg» we'd stayed at while clearing the floor). As intended, we'd arrived back at town on the fifth floor, gotten a pad of paper to copy down the inscription, and then...

Nothing. With it's cryptic language and vague meaning, we'd wandered around at random while staring at it, teleporting up and down floors until we didn't feel like walking anymore and plopped on this bench. It was still before noon, so we still had the whole day ahead of us... —If only we could figure out this riddle.

"Argh! I don't get it!" I scrambled both hands against the top of my head to mess up my hair, even though it seemed impossible to make it form a single knot. "Huuuh~" Letting out a dejected sigh, I kept staring at the piece of paper as if it would suddenly spit out the answer.

"Let's try this again," Keiko said slowly. "The very first part says that we have to go to 'The Far Land'. Where would that be? There aren't any floors with a description like that..."

"Well, if they mean to say the farthest land there is, that would be the hundredth floor," I commented.

"No way, this is just the first orb, they couldn't possibly have hidden it all the way up there..." she said, though she was unsure of her own words. After thinking some more, she asked, "What else could 'far' mean?"

"...far doesn't mean anything else, just far, distant, a long way off..." I thought aloud. "Wait, but that's not it. It's 'Far Land'. It's saying that the land itself is far, not that it's far away," I realized.

"Ehh?" Keiko blinked in surprise. "But what's that supposed to mean? What does it mean when a land _is_ far? Far is a distance, not really a description..."

"Well..." I put my hand to my chin as I thought of what it could be about. Far land... distant land... distance... land... far... long... large... "Eh?" I looked up as something finally occurred to me. "What if, by 'far' they mean that the land _is_ far..." We already said that. How to say what I was thinking... "I mean... like, the... big!" At a loss for how to express my meaning, I resorted to just rambling until I got a coherent meaning. "Like the land has distance. It's big and wide and has a lot of room... Large and long and..."

"Oh, I get it. You're trying to say it's referring to a floor with a lot of land. A big floor, no, the biggest floor."

"The first floor!" we realized at the same time. Shooting to our feet, we ran the dozen or so meters to the «Teleport Gate», (which wasn't actually a gate on this floor, but an area bounded by a flowerbed) and warped back to the first floor. Since we were already running as we landed, of course I was placed directly in front of someone heading for the gate. However, that's exactly what I expected to happen, and swerved neatly around him before tearing down the road and out of the town.

Coming to a stop in the grasslands to the North of the «Starting City», we again looked at the copied down riddle. "Then next part reads: 『...atop the great pyramid of the morning sun.』"

"But, there aren't any pyramids on the first floor..." Keiko grumbled.

"Yeah, but there aren't any pyramids on any other floors either," I mentioned with a chuckle.

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Argh! What do we do next?!" I shouted in aggravation.

After a minute, Keiko suddenly gasped, then smacked herself in the forehead. "Duh! 'of the morning sun?'" As soon as she said this, I realized what any citizen of Japan would know.

"It means East!" We ran around the city until we reached the East gate and turned to look directly toward the outside edge of the floor. "That's it!" Past the river which ran a good length of the floor, there was a mountain range, at the center of which, one mountain clearly rose a great distance higher than the ones around it.

"Right, mountains have the same triangle shape as pyramids," Keiko thought aloud.

"Let's go," I said quickly, and we started running straight toward the Eastern mountains. Even taking a detour to go around the river, it didn't take long to get there with our speed. When we came to a stop again, a few short hills broke up the level landscape before the large mountainous peaks rose beyond.

"So, what came next?" Keiko asked. I held up the paper and she read off, "dadadadada- 『...you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent.』 Soo... 'mouth of the canyon'?" she said with a confused look. As far as I could see, there weren't any canyons around here, it was all flat ground.

"Let's go up these hills for a better look," I advised. After we climbed up to the top of one nearby, we again scanned around in all directions, with no more success.

"Then, maybe the canyon is closer to the big mountain we're heading for," Keiko suggested. With that, we continued on, entering the high ridged section of this floor. We cut through the valleys between mountains, twisting in various directions, but managing to always continue farther East. Among all these tall mountains, we soon lost sight of the one we were aiming for, though we would surely see it again when we found this valley we were looking for.

After reaching a number of dead-ends which we had to circumvent, we realized that there probably wasn't a path through the valleys and began to climb over a low section in one of the mountains blocking our way. Once we reached the top, we realized why we'd had trouble. This whole section of mountains was higher- the actual level of flat ground was raised quite a few meters upward.

Continuing on, we again caught sight of the tallest mountain, if only briefly. Farther into the mountains, it was really setting in that this area was larger than it seemed from a distance. Before, it was like a small bit which just hung around the edge of the floor, but now I saw that it actually was a very large section of land. It certainly said a lot for the vastness of the first floor.

As we finally cleared others mountains, the tallest finally stood before us. However, now that we were here we found something else surprising. There were numerous smaller slopes rising virtually all around the tall mountain. We would have to climb them to reach the one in the middle. Well, before that we'd have to find-

My foot touched nothing but air. "UWAA!?" As my gaze snapped back down from the mountains high overhead, I realized what I had completely missed before. The huge dropoff, which I was stepping into at this very moment. With too much of my balance tipped forward, I wouldn't be able to keep from falling in. So, I threw my weight backward and bent at the hips, while turning sideways and throwing my arms out. At the same time, Keiko grabbed my hands, pulling hard and yanking me from the cliff edge. Landing in a heap, I took a few slow breaths.

"Oh man that was close," I sighed.

"Sure was, pay attention to where you're going," my little sister chastised me. "And get off of me while you're at it." As she said, I stood back up, giving her a hand in a moment, and turning to look at the cliff I'd very nearly just fallen over. However, when I looked down, I couldn't see anything. Wherever the bottom was, it was so far down that everything faded to black. I gulped, thankful that I'd avoided falling to a sure death

"Guess we found the canyon. So where are these guardians?" I looked around, but the only thing here was the edge of the cliff.

"Didn't it say we had to go to 'the mouth of the canyon' though?" Keiko pointed out.

"Ah, that's right," I thought aloud, and we started walking along the edge of the cliff, careful to leave some room so I wouldn't accidentally fall in. Eventually, it turned and we continued along the edge. It looked like this canyon went all the way around the large mountain, separating it from all the rest. (Not to mention making it impossible to actually get to.)

Finally, after walking around for nearly twenty minutes, we found a path which bridged the canyon. We turned onto it and walked carefully, in single file, as it was only a few meters wide. The path sloped gently downward as we went, then began to widen slightly, though still not enough to walk without caution. And then, we reached the base of the mountains surrounding our goal. The path continued on, circling up the side of the one right in front of us. However...

Standing before us, one on either side of the path ahead, were the guardians.


	121. Chapter 115

**Ascending the Mountain of Doom...?**** Chapter 115**

Directly ahead, flanking the path we intended to take, the 'guardians' spoken of in the riddle stood perfectly still. The reason was pretty obvious– because they were giant statues. Hadn't it said we would need to defeat them? But they weren't moving... We slowed our pace until we were practically tip-toeing forward, as if the statues would suddenly come to life.

When we had nearly reached the path ahead, a low rumbling went through the ground for a second. Then, oddly enough, the statues did _exactly_ what we'd been expecting them to do the whole time. Animating all at once, they drew up on either side of us. Jumping backward to gain some distance, we drew our weapons as the red cursors and three health bars appeared over each statue. 『Stone Guardian』 they were both named.

These were only floor one mobs. Even if they were the greatest of the elites, it would be no trouble for us with a safety margin good enough to fight on the eighteenth floor, (following the general floor + 10 rule most people went by) so we rushed forward, drawing up our blades so they began to glow with light.

The statues both had a longsword and kite shield, as well as armor, though it was all made of a single block of stone, so I had no idea if they really worked in combat. To answer my thought, they brought their swords high into the air, Sword Skill light effects glowing around the dull stone blades. I was on the left side, so I swung my attack upward intending to parry it away and use the opening to go on the offensive.

_Dodge!_ Just before our Sword Skills collided, this thought both occurred to me and was shouted directly into my mind. I released the tension in my arm, causing my blade to simply slide past the giant statue's. Leaning my body backward, I slid under its attack, which crashed with a huge explosion into the ground not far away. Without even taking the hit, I realized that its attack power was ridiculous. Way stronger than anything should be on this floor. At least its speed was in a much lower range. As I realized this, I regained my balance, in time to block the short swing the guardian brought back up from the ground where its previous attack had landed.

"Ughhaa!" A shout escaped my mouth as the unexpected force nearly knocked my sword from my hand. Managing to keep my grip on the precious blade, my entire body was thrown instead. As I went crashing across the smooth ground, I knew there was a serious problem. Throwing my body to the left as much as I could, I finally came to a stop within a few meters of the cliff edge. If I hadn't moved sideways while sliding, I would have fallen right over.

"So that's why they have such high attack," I thought aloud. It was so they could knock opponents from the platform without much of a fight. But still! I'd barely managed to stay on with a weak backhanded attack like that. If I'd tried to block anything else... I had to shake those thoughts from my mind. Keiko was still fighting, dodging repeatedly, and I could already feel my strength starting to drain away from the great distance between us. Before the full effect kicked in, making it any harder for her, I had to get back into the fight.

Kicking up from the ground, I shot across the smooth platform as fast as I could, quickly closing the gap and negating the negative distance effects. Drawing my sword back, I slid under the guardian's overhanded blow and tore into its leg with a series of Sword Skills. Even though it was on the first floor, this thing was solid rock, and my attacks hardly did any damage. At least it was slow. As long as it couldn't hit me, I could beat it.

A few minutes passed like this, dodging its slow attacks and countering with everything I had until its long delays ended and I slid past the following attack. Keiko did the same with her foe, and we slowly cut their health down, until she finally defeated the first one. Unlike other monsters, it didn't shatter into particles immediately. Instead, the whole statue froze up. Slowly, gravity pulled it down and it came down with a huge crash on its side.

As soon as it went down, Keiko leaped into my fight, and we dispatched the second, which was already nearly dead. Once the second struck the field, they both shattered into a massive particle effect, covering the entire area in shining blue lights for a minute.

As we sheathed our weapons and continued up the path, Keiko sighed. "Oh man, those things were way too strong for this floor."

"Nn," I nodded along. If that trend kept up, this might be _really_ difficult... We followed the path as it went up along the outside of one of the smaller mountains. It was uneven and winding, so we often found ourselves turning both left and right to move on. Eventually, it turned out that the smaller mountains were actually connected. We were still going along the outside, so we would need to reach the top or find a cave that went through if we were going to reach the inside, and from there, get to the tallest center mountain somehow.

At least the path was rather wide, so we didn't have to worry about accidentally falling off or anything. Making a tight left turn, we rounded a corner to find a shocking sight. The path ended. Not five meters farther, the path just ended, steep rocky cliff below, with a waterfall pouring down from the wall on our left, down into the perfectly black pit below.

"Well, I didn't see that coming..." I said quietly. "Wait a second, what gives? What was the next part of the riddle?" Of course, we put away the paper once we gotten into the area where we would have to fight, so I pulled it from our inventory and read aloud. "『Next, take a leap of faith.』"

"..."

We both looked down into the gorge below.

"..."

"We have to jump in there, don't we?"

"Yup." I nodded slowly.

"Ok then-"

"Waaaiitt!" I cried, grabbing Keiko's elbow before she jumped over the edge.

"What's wrong?" she asked with a confused look.

"I know you'll be fine if you jump in, but I'll definitely land on the one rock at the bottom and diiieee!" I pleaded, falling to my knees as I clutched her arm.

"Oh yeah, that's right..." she said, as if just remembering my terrible luck now. "Then let's just jump together. My luck is stronger than yours, so we'll both land safely," she smiled, completely sure of herself as always. I nodded twice with big teary eyes. "Three two one jump!" She yelled, and we both stepped from the edge of the cliff.

As soon as we started falling, I used all of my limbs to completely wrap myself around Keiko.

Pleasedon'tdiepleasedon'tdiepleasdon'tdie.

_Splash._ My frantic thoughts were interrupted when we landed in cold water. Actually, it was really cold. Though not surprising, given that it was still winter.

"Cold cold cold!" I howled.

"Stop whining and look out!" Keiko shouted. I turned with a 'huh' and saw that directly ahead, there was a low overhang of rock moving toward me.

Wait, why was the rock moving toward me? I looked down, and even in the terribly dark lighting, I could see (and now that I was paying attention, feel) the current sweeping us along.

"It's a river?!" I cried out, then my forehead cracked into the low-hanging ceiling. Tons of stars filled my vision. "Ooh, so much pretty shiny..."

"Onii-chan?! Hang in there!"

_Edit- Author Note: Oh my god I just thought of a new name for the story! Like, right now__! ^o^ How does: "A Game You Don't Play" sound?  
_


	122. Cheatsheet 6

—

«»

『』

#######

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

#######

exp 1552079

col 1750000

#######

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 0

STR 34

AGI 50

HP 5130

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 0

STR 34

AGI 50

HP 5130

#######

One-handed Sword 234

Sp: 551000

Sprint 177

Sp: 317000

Battle Healing 152

Sp: 233000

Dagger 239

Sp: 576000

Metal Working 193

Sp: 375500

Metal Refining 190

Sp: 365000

Tailoring 100

Sp: 101500

Cloth Refining 30

Sp: 9500

Martial Arts 2

Sp: 52

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

#######

# E Note

Cloth shirt 2 2 Green

Cloth skirt 2 2 Blue

Boots 2 2 Brown

Veiled Wayfinder 1 1 10S 10D – mainly black

Blade of Ferin 1 1 Veiled Wayfinder with Ferin in crystal slot

Harmonious Convoy 2 2 10S 5D – mainly white/gray

Half-cloak 2 2 Black

Basic Army Armor 2 0

Cloth Sack 1 0 Holds things

Woodland Arrow 86 0 Arrows fired by 7th floor boss

Various Ores xx 0 for crafting with metal

Spare Clothes xx 0 dull grayish & not that well made

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

blessed twins shard of power I 15

30% full

#######

Level chart

11 44000 220000-264000

12 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20 80000 760000-840000

21 84000 840000-924000

22 88000 924000-1012000

23 92000 1012000-1104000

24 96000 1104000-1200000

25 100000 1200000-1300000

26 104000 1300000-1404000

27 108000 1404000-1512000

28= 112000 1512000-1624000

29 116000 1624000-1740000

30 120000 1740000-1860000

#######

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

#######

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

#######

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

#######

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four... ? 』

-3-

?

-4-

?


	123. Chapter 116

**To the Peak**** Chapter 116**

_Author Note: Oops. The title I came up with was an SAO reference, (Kayaba said it) but I think I heard that it was only from the commercials, so it might not be that well known... Hmm, guess I'll keep thinking._

The dark river quickly swept us along, hardly enough room to keep our heads above water. For some number of minutes we went, sliding and bashing off of unseen rocks, until we finally washed up on solid ground again. If our bodies could be marked, we'd surely be covered head to toe with bruises and scrapes after that.

Well, we weren't, so we shook it off quickly and looked around this new place. Except, it was so dark we could hardly see anything. So, we each pulled a magical shard from our inventory and called for light. They started to glow, showering the room in dim light as we both moved slowly forward, spreading out to either side as we went. I pulled the paper from our inventory as well and began reading. "『Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on.』" I read aloud. "Sounds like we'll have to fight zombies or something." Up ahead, I squinted and looked closely, pretty sure I could make out a little bit of light filtering in from there. That must be the way out. But, before I could say anything about that, a chill went up my back.

"I don't think there's any 'or something' to it..." Keiko said slowly, as many lumps rose from the ground all around us. Dozens of zombies popped up from the dirt, and we drew our swords. With our offhand occupied holding the lights, we would have to get by with just a sword in this next fight. Swinging my blade around, light effects flashed out around me. Then, we charged.

…

"Why were those zombies so weak?" Keiko asked as we walked up the path toward where light indicated a way out.

"I was wondering about that too..." I muttered. After those strong guardians, those zombies hadn't even been a challenge. I wouldn't say they were within a floor one strength range. They were stronger than that, but still couldn't be compared to the stone guardians in any way.

"Maybe it was the light?" she pointed out. I raised an eyebrow at that. It was a motion she couldn't see, but that didn't stop her from knowing that I did it, so she explained. "Normally, no one has anything on them to create light, right? Can you imagine how much harder it would have been if we'd been fighting blind?" I thought about it for a few seconds.

Then, "Oh! I get it. This too: if it had been just one person, they would've been swarmed by zombies without being able to see anything. However, even if it was a full party, in the dark they would have hit each other as much as their enemies," I pointed out. That whole fight rested on the assumption that we wouldn't be able to see anything. Their mistake, I grinned.

We continued up the path as it rose, until finally exiting the cave back into the sunlight. Although, the light was just beginning to take on a bit of a reddish tint. However, there were high mountain walls in every direction, so I couldn't turn to see where the sun was, since it would be within the visible sky by now. I checked the time instead. 2:47 pm. Wow, we'd been at this for a while now.

Waving away my menu, we pressed on– no, up the path which wound in all directions, the mountains now all around us. We must be in some low spot within the tall peaks, I thought while looking around. As we continued to move carefully forward on the narrow cliff-side path, the surroundings slowly but surely grew increasingly red as the sun inched its way toward the horizon. Normally, this would cause us to pick up our pace to finish by nightfall, but not now. We couldn't rush in this sort of situation because it would seriously increase the chance of a fatal misstep. (In a very literal way too.)

In the cold winter air, we slowly made the long walk up the mountain path, shivering as it seemed to take forever for our clothes to dry in the chill air. In the end, we gave up and changed into some random stuff sitting in our inventory. It's not like there was anyone else to see us here anyway.

A good deal more time passed before we finally came to something new. It was an old rope bridge which hung hardly a meter above a quickly rushing river. The difference between a normal rope bridge and this one was: it didn't have any sides. The planks which made up the bridge appeared to be held together solely by rope along the bottom. Meaning, nothing to hold on to...

"Let's see..." I pulled out the paper again and read off from where I was last. "『Move through the river of lost souls.』 Check. 『Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on.』 Check. 『Follow the winding stair.』 I guess that's this path, so, check. 『Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns.』 Bridge of _thorns_?" I leaned forward a bit, but there definitely weren't any thorns on the bridge.

"Wait, why would we give up all hope?" Keiko asked, tilting her head in confusion.

"Hmm, don't know... how about we just test the bridge first?" I suggested. She nodded and we stepped out onto it. Under our feet, the entire structure bucked much more than it should have, and since there were no ropes to hold on to, we had to wave our hands frantically to keep our balance as the whole thing swung to and fro wildly.

"What is this?!" Keiko shouted. If it was like this, it would be very difficult to cross this bridge. If we fell... I looked down, and what I saw made my eyes go wide. I jumped backward, knocking both of us off the bridge and back onto the solid ground before it.

"Oh my god..." I huffed out, my breath coming in pants despite not having done anything to cause it. "I get the name now. The thorns aren't on the bride, they're under it. The whole river is full of spikes," I explained. We both crawled up to the edge of the path, where the river lay on both sides of the deathtrap bridge. Sure enough, sticking a little bit up above the water level, were spikes. Everywhere. If we fell off the bridge, it was the end for us.

"Waitwaitwait! There's still one thing that doesn't make any sense. The riddle says: give up all hope before crossing. Why would it say that? There has to be some trick to it... If we give up hope, we're not going to succeed. We'll get thrown onto the spikes and die, right?"

"Yeah..." I nodded slowly, unsure of where she was going with this. Actually, it seemed like she was still trying to figure that part out too.

"Then, then... if we give up all hope before crossing..." Her eyes suddenly widened. I felt that she'd figured it out, and raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain her thoughts. "If giving up means falling in, then if we give up before we start, we'll get thrown in as soon as we step onto the bridge!" With that exclamation, we again inched over the side to look directly below. For the first half of a meter or so, there were no spikes below.

"So, the trick is to _not_ try to cross the bridge. Instead, we're going through the river," I realized aloud. Keiko nodded emphatically. Since following the directions exactly would be dangerous, we didn't walk out onto the bridge to fall in, since we might still land on the spikes accidentally. Instead, we carefully slid down the side next to the bridge and into the river.

"Uuu, why does it have to be another river?" I complained, wincing as the icy water slowly enveloped my body. Finally, we were both in the water, the current quickly pulling us a couple meters downstream, until we hit some of the spikes.

"Heh, spikes are no good if you're coming from the wrong direction," Keiko chuckled. All these spikes sticking up couldn't do anything to us as long as we were hitting the side. Instead, they acted more like walls, and we moved sideways until we reached the end of this patch of spikes. The water pulled us farther, to the next patch, and we slowly proceeded downstream by working our way through the maze-like spiked and non-spiked sections. Finally, all the spikes ended, and we quickly washed the rest of the way downstream. Looking ahead, I could see that this river lead straight toward the highest mountain, our destination.

Coming up on the bank, we again changed clothes, though it hardly did any good since we were freezing from having been in the water for so long. Trying to shake off the painful cold in all my limbs, I started walking again. Keiko visibly shook herself, doing the same. Ahead the way opened up. Instead of a single path, there was now a large, open pathway straight up the mountainside. It was really steep but definitely possible to climb. Then, looking to either side, I saw something surprising. Besides this one way up, all the rest of the sides were perfectly smooth drop-offs most of the way to the top. The only reason it wasn't visible before was because of all the other mountains rising around it. This was the _only_ way up the mountain.

But that wasn't it, there was one more thing. "We have to watch out," I said. I pulled the paper out again, not quite remembering the line word for word. "『Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek.』" I read off. "Looks like there will be flying mobs attacking us on the way up too."

"Hey, can I?" Keiko asked, reaching out for the paper. I handed it over, and her eyes scanned the writing. "Since we might be fighting the boss as soon as we reach the top, let's try to keep the last part in mind, since we might not have a chance to read from now on," she advised. I nodded, focusing so I could commit the rest to memory. "『Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』" We both repeated the last couple lines in our heads a number of times to memorize them.

"Ok, now let's get going." We both took a long breath, drawing our weapons. "Let's push through to the top in one go!" With that declaration, we ran up the mountain. It was steep and seriously impeded our progress, but we still managed to make our way up at a very fast pace. It was only about sixty meters, so we were halfway there by the time we heard the screeches coming in on both sides.

"It's the guardians!" Keiko shouted as we each looked off to one side. Coming from who-knows-where, there were winged creatures moving swiftly toward us. Even from so far off, my sharp vision allowed me to tell what type of creatures they were. Harpies- bird women. These ones were green, humanoid besides for the wings which grew from their arms and the huge clawed talons on their feet. Their whole body was covered with feathers, a couple coming off in the wind and drifting away into the mountains. They were all named 『Winged Guardian』, and had two bars of hp. I counted twelve enemies in total.

We made it into the last quarter of the stretch to the top before they were on us. We swung our blades upward as the first harpy plunged toward us, but from this terrible incline, we could hardly put any weight behind the blades without compromising our footing. Both of our attacks could hardly redirect the first enemy, which was soon followed by two more, so we had to slide sideways along the cliff-face to evade.

Another dove straight toward me, and I dug both feet in as hard as I could while deflecting it sideways. However, the weight still caused me to begin sliding back down the cliff. Keiko rushed toward me to give me a hand, but a harpy used the opportunity to attack. At the last moment, Keiko swung her blade backhanded, without using a sword skill, to barely deflect the attack. However, her momentum sent her stumbling, hardly able to keep from losing her footing entirely.

I managed to kick hard into the ground and stop my backslide, but by now I was a few meters below my sister, as another harpy dropped in, swinging its wing to sweep Keiko off the right side of the cliff.

The moment I saw her loose her footing, my jaw dropped. If she fell like that, she would fall straight over the sheer drop-off on the side of this one path. Then, I moved.

Pressing both feet against the ground hard, I activated «Flash» and instantly moved sideways, right up to the very edge of the path and stabbed both of my weapons into the solid rock. With my left hand on my sword, I grabbed the collar of my shirt with my right and pulled, tearing it apart in an instant. Leaning as far over the side as I could, I thrust my hand out with the rag extending out a little farther.

"Grab on!" I shouted, and my sister turned in midair. Her hand reached out desperately, her fingers barely managing to take hold of the ragged edges of the torn shirt in my grasp. With one strong pull, the angle of her descent changed course, moving back toward the safe path. The shift was only slight, before the shirt shattered into shards of light. Grabbing my weapons again, I allowed my weight to pull me down the steep slope.

Sliding down nearly as fast as fast as Keiko was falling, I waited until she moved close enough, back over the safe path again, and her feet hit the ground. That slowed her down enough that I caught up in a moment, reaching out and grabbing each other's hands. I stabbed my sword back into the ground, slicing through as it began to slow us down. However, the harpies wouldn't give us a break, already shooting down toward us again. I pulled Keiko forward and she swung past me, drawing her sword and swinging powerful Sword Skills at the harpies as they came to keep them off us, before gravity began to pull her down again.

I caught her while still sliding backward but soon managed to come to a stop. Together, we stood only a short distance from the very bottom of the slope, the dozen harpies retreating a little ways up the cliff, waiting for us to come higher before attacking again.

Standing with one hand holding the blade keeping us in place, and the other supporting Keiko, I asked, "How are we supposed to get past them? We can't put any power into our attacks with this footing, and we start sliding back down whenever we try." As I spoke, I flicked the wrist of my left hand which was supporting my sister, and equipped another random shirt.

She seemed at a loss for a few moments, then her eyes fell to my blade still stuck into the ground. "I've got it. When they come to attack, use your sword to steady yourself, and your dagger to attack." I looked down at my sword, thinking of her advice.

"That sounds good." I nodded, and we both shifted our stances to allow us to stand on our own again. I retrieved my blade and we started running. As we passed the first quarter of the slope, the harpies renewed their attack, plummeting down toward us, baring their sharp talons. As we planned, we would stab our swords into the steep ground to give us enough support and attack with our daggers. Unfortunately, the small blades weren't enough to deflect their powerful attacks, with so much momentum and gravity behind them. So instead, we aimed our attacks directly at their bodies, exchanging a single blow before they broke away to wheel around for another dive.

After the first couple attacks, it was obvious that our «Battle Healing» couldn't keep up with their damage, since there were so many of them. We each drank an expensive potion to speed up our healing, but even that couldn't quite keep up with their damage. However, it slowed it to the point that we were only missing a sliver more after each attack, than the one before. Like that, we pressed up the cliff, exchanging blows with the harpies, who did not regain hp between bouts. Before too long, they lost their first bar of hp, while we were still a little above half health.

Between each attack, we would both jump forward, plunging our swords into the ground to ready ourselves for the next. We nearly reached the top as the harpies all fell to the yellow zone. However, when the last one fell to yellow, all the harpies backed off. Either, they were going to stop, or their attack pattern was changing. Unfortunately, it was the latter.

All at once, the entire flack swooped down, around us. We went back to back, six harpies in front of each of us, and stabbed our swords down to hold our ground. Wings and claws beat at us from all sides. There was no way to move forward like this. Instead, we just swung our daggers with every Sword Skill we could, as fast as we could. In the corner of my vision, our hp bars quickly began to drop, reaching yellow within seconds. There was no way we could finish them all off before they got us, not like this.

"Onii-chan, whirl!" Keiko shouted over the din of gusting air and screeching monsters. Sheathing our daggers, we both drew our swords from the ground while clasping hands. Flicking our weapons down to begin the Sword Skill, we then kicked off, into the air in opposite directions, causing us to spin. Swirling around each other, we used «Whirl», a spinning attack which probably was never designed to be used this way. Holding our blades out, they cut through the monsters encircling us over and over.

In a moment, light exploded all around, blinding me for a moment as my feet touched the sloped ground again, so I had to stab my blade down again. Then, the particles all around spread out and flew away, as if blown by the wind, before vanishing into nothing.

We quickly climbed the remaining distance to the top, before any more enemies showed up, or the mountainside collapsed, or something else ridiculous happened. At the very edge where the mountaintop leveled off, we both collapsed, catching our breath as the last of our health regenerated.

"That was crazy..." I muttered. I'd never considered how hard it was fighting with such poor footing before. Of course, that was mostly because other mobs were on the ground and their footing would be just as bad, so none would be standing in such a place.

But whatever the case. We made it here. To the top. Finally. After a minute, we stood up again. We opened our menus, changing back into our regular clothes, which were finally dry. Then, we equipped our full set of armor.

"Now the Boss is all that's left," we said together.


	124. Chapter 117

**The First Orb**** Chapter 117**

_Author Note: Ok, here's your music Jman12394. _youtube /watch?v=PanHua0iBAE_ :p_

Atop the mountain, we both stood looking around for a minute. While the sides were massively steep, rising so close to the floor above I could probably touch it with a good jump, the top was quite flat. Not entirely, but enough that the slightly bumpy ground would allow us to really go wild. It helped that the mountaintop was about one hundred meters across as well. Unless the boss was crazy strong, we wouldn't have to worry about being knocked off. However, that wasn't entirely out of the question, after fighting those stone guardians. Hell, even the harpies had tried knocking us off given the opportunity.

As we walked slowly forward, I noted to Keiko not to get too close to the sides, in case the boss would use the chance to knock us off. Without a bit of change in her expression, she nodded once. We drew our sword and dagger, our awareness heightening as our adrenaline got pumping. Our pulses were probably picking up in our real bodies too, I thought while trying to keep from getting _too_ tense.

When we nearly reached the center, the boss finally showed itself. Bursting from the ground, it sent large chunks of rock flying in every direction. We both dashed to the side, avoiding them as the huge form emerged before us. Once the rocks were clear, we stopped for a moment, getting a look at the boss. As the inscription had said, it's name was 『The Harvester of Souls』. However, it didn't match the grim reaper idea I'd had in my head. Instead, of a skeleton, it was a centaur. Also, it didn't have a scythe. The weapon it held was long, but no sickle blade rested at the top. It was curved slightly backward. Looking at the shape of the blade and the long handle, I knew the weapon as a naginata.

Now that I knew that, I would be much better prepared to fight against it. The naginata had long reach and powerful attacks, like most polearms. However, it was almost completely ineffective at close range, since its blade was all the way at the end of the long shaft. Before the Boss could begin to act, we both rushed in as fast as we could to take advantage of that weakness.

The dagger Charge Skill «Swift Cut» quickly brought me into range, and I followed through, making two upward slashes from either side, before stepping sideways toward its flank and unleashing «Sharpnail», a three-hit attack linking a horizontal slash, into an upward slant, and finishing with a strong downward attack, the light effects creating a '4' where my blade had cut into the huge centaur's leg. It was tall enough that I couldn't easily reach any higher to aim for its human torso. When my attack ended, the centaur boss reared up on its hind legs and wailed.

Except its scream was human. "Curse you! You vermin will rue this day forever, once I strangle you and tear your souls out!" Not good... I thought, freaked out by the sudden speech. Up until now, that evil psychotic reindeer Nick was the only boss to speak. Even the Elf boss on the seventh floor, who should have been entirely capable of speaking Japanese hadn't spoken a word through the whole fight. Shaking it off, I charged again, raising my sword to begin «Reverser», a Sword Skill of two slants. However, the boss spun with an agility I wasn't expecting, its front legs firing out before I could so much as flinch. I felt two hits connect, one against each of my shoulders. The force stopped the top half of me dead, but my legs retained their momentum, pulling me down backward so the back of my head smashed into the ground.

Everything went black. However, that couldn't stop my mind this time. No! I can't black out! I told my body to roll forward, even as all the feeling in me was cut off, leaving me like I was floating in nothingness. Then, there was some light as my consciousness quickly began returning. Run. Stay low and run, I told myself. Even as I was just beginning to recover, I felt two more crashing hits, this time against my back. My vision blurred back into my consciousness in time for Keiko to catch me and leap away. Even after my vision cleared, I could still hardly see. It felt like hitting my head against the ground had seriously damaged my helmet and bent it all out of shape. As always, the hp bar in the corner of my vision was perfectly clear. A little more than thirty percent. Man, this guy could pack a punch, especially for a first floor boss.

I grabbed the back of my helmet and tore it off my head, tossing it away in one motion. Grabbing a potion from one of my pouches, I pulled it up to my lips and tipped my head back. Throwing the potion aside, I glanced back in time to see the boss charging again. We both threw ourselves out of the way, rolling to our feet as it ground to a stop and began to turn toward us again. So far, we had only taken a little bit out of the first of its four bars of health. We had to get on the offensive again if we were going to beat it.

Rushing in, we split to either side, allowing its charging attack to pass between us while we lashed out with our daggers and cut into it on both sides with «Reaver». When we stopped and turned back around, we'd already put some more room between us, so we flicked our swords up to point out at a low angle. Dashing forward again, «Sonic Leap» started and we jumped, closing the distance in a moment and slashing into its flanks before it managed to turn around. However, its back hooves shot out, and we both took glancing blows across our chests as we barely managed to shift aside.

We swung our swords around once, then down to our right sides, pointed outward. A green light effect picked up around the blades, and we stepped forward at the same time that the boss spun its whole body around. Halfway through swinging our blades, the boss leaned down toward us.

Then, a strange smoke blew out from its gaping mouth. An ominous "uuuuuuuooooohhh" sound emitting with it. Cutting our attacks short, we jumped backward just as the smog stuff started to envelope us. Skidding to a halt, we hesitated. The boss seemed to be stuck in a Delay after that strange attack, but we didn't dare go near it because the fog was still hovering around its legs.

"What did that do?" I asked aloud.

"No idea," Keiko answered. I could feel, hear even, both of our pulses pounding. This thing had some unknown trick up its sleeve. Since we didn't have any idea what it did, we had to be even more careful. The boss recovered after a few more seconds- it was the longest delay I'd ever seen. What was that attack supposed to do? Once it began to move again, it rushed directly toward us again. We kicked off, raising our swords at the same time.

We both caught the difference. It was holding its naginata differently than before. So, it wouldn't be a thrusting attack, probably because the last one had worked so poorly. Then its hand turned and I knew where it was going. Both of us activated «Sonic Leap» and jumped high into the air. In the next moment, the huge centaur swung its attack horizontally through where we had been. Coming back down, we had enough height to slice into its unarmored human torso, both of us cutting straight through its large shoulders. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I whipped my sword around and spun. With the Sword Skill «Whirl», I cut into all four of its legs, my blade barely sliding over top of my sister's.

That did it for the first bar of health, just three to go. But a new bar often meant a change in attack patterns. Raising my weapons and preparing to defend, I heard a sound. It was unlike anything else I'd ever heard before, like a sort of broiling, popping sound. I looked up and my jaw dropped. I slowly felt myself backing away as a second torso, pitch black like oil, came bubbling up from the horse body. As the bubbling oil slowly formed, the black color wore away, looking more like grayish human skin. Like the skin of a dead body.

"Oh my god what is that thing!?" we both screamed at the same time.

"Now you've done it. I'll really make you pay!" Following the words which gushed darkly from both the living and dead mouths, they leaned forward at the same time and spewed more dark mist at us before we could recover from the shock. Shaking ourselves aggressively, we jumped away again. However, this time we didn't get away as quickly. We even breathed in some of it.

After getting some distance, we came to a stop. However, that dark stuff still didn't seem to be doing anything to us. As far as I could tell, it didn't even cause damage when we breathed it in. I glanced over at Keiko to ask if she had any ideas. "An-" but cut off before I hardly started.

Because, her armor was all torn up. There was no way she'd taken enough hits for it to look like that. Even I hadn't taken enough for mine to be so beaten up yet. So that smog damaged equipment? As soon as I realized that, my eyes flicked over to the weapons in my hands. The armor didn't really matter, but these weapons were irreplaceable. Looking at my hands, I saw two things. First, my dagger looked like it was about to break. Totally opposite of the dagger, my sword appeared completely untouched. Afraid that the small weapon might break at any moment, I shoved it back into my inventory. However, when I looked at my sword, its durability appearing alongside the weapon, I saw that it was still completely full.

"It must be because of the crystal," I thought aloud. By now, Keiko had also realized how beaten up our equipment was and stashed her dagger back in our inventory. She was staring at her sword, the blade dull and beaten looking. Her face openly held a look of fear for the first time I could remember. "Keiko, put a crystal into your sword!" I shouted to get through to her. In the time we'd used to examine our equipment, the boss had again recovered from its long delay attack. At least we knew what it was up to now.

The idea made sense, destroying our equipment would quickly weaken us. In fact, if having a crystal in my sword didn't make it immune to such effects, I would have run from this fight. I wasn't like I used to be- I didn't carry around seventeen spare swords in case mine broke. Because I trusted that it wouldn't. I'd never expected there to be monsters with attacks specifically meant to destroy equipment...

While I was thinking these thoughts, the boss had begun its next charge. Since Keiko was working on getting a crystal into her sword, I spread my feet into a wider stance. I sheathed, then unsheathed my sword, beginning to charge for a «Flash Draw» moments before the mutant centaur reached me. However, it wasn't quite enough time, and I unleashed the Sword Skill a little early. Still, it was a powerful attack, and when my blade clashed with its long naginata, a huge light effect burst from the collision as both attacks were nullified. Pressing forward with all my might to push back the boss' blade, I knew I could only manage for a few seconds. Without the huge advantage of that powerful Sword Skill, my Strength was not high enough to match it. In the corner of my vision, I could see my hp beginning to decrease slightly. It wouldn't be a problem with my «Battle Healing», but at this rate I wouldn't be able to hold it back.

After the deadlock continued for a few seconds, its newly grown second torso reached over and grabbed the naginata's long shaft, and I suddenly felt the force pushing against me increase all at once, throwing me sideways. I hit the ground on my back and bounced, flipping backward in midair to land on my feet. I was still pressing my feet hard into the ground to stop the long backward slide when the boss reached Keiko, who had just finished placing a crystal into her sword. With the blade now glowing with light, she blocked the attack but was still sent flying. After she tumbled across the ground for a few seconds, she rolled right up to me and I caught her.

"Ok, we know what we're up against. Let's do this," I said, looking up at the enemy turning to face us once more. We clashed numerous times, trading blows back and forth all over the place while slowly wearing down the boss. Our «Battle Healing» quickly replenished our health whenever the centaur managed to land an attack, and it began to look like this fight would be a victory. However, when we succeeded in taking out its second bar of hp, another torso sprouted up out of it.

"Is this thing a centaur or Cerberus?!" I shouted angrily. Unfortunately, with its third torso, it also drew a second weapon from its inventory. It was a curved sword... except, it was curved the wrong way. The huge blade curved forward with the blade, instead of backward. With these two weapons in hand, all three heads started laughing at the same time, in three completely different voices.

"Resistance is futile! Just give up and make it easier on yourselves!"

"We'll be a'hackin and a'slicin'..."

"Gahahaha this is it for you!" They all spoke over each other, and I shook my head.

"Shut up!" I shouted back, and we charged forward. We jumped narrowly over the first attacks, which came slanting down from both sides. When we landed, we started to draw our swords back to start a Sword Skill, but it was already slashing in again. We desperately turned while raising our swords. Both attacks collided with our weapons and crushed us back-to-back against each other.

"Guh!" I choked out a cry through gritted teeth as the enormous weight pressed us into each other so hard our hp started to chip away faster than we healed. While holding us like that from both sides, the center torso leaned down and belched more of the dark gas at us. There wasn't much we could do besides wait for it to finish. Then, its delay started, and we both rolled underneath the weapons which had previously been smashing us together. We quickly circled around toward the back, where the smog wasn't as thick. While it wouldn't hurt us or our weapons now, it was still slowly decaying our armor.

From behind, we used the full opportunity to attack, chaining together one sword skill after another, until the monster's delay ended, and we narrowly avoided a back-kick from its hind hooves before launching a last attack. From there, we just kept running in circles around it, slashing away until it finally managed to peg us with an attack and send us flying away again. With that, we'd worked through most of its third bar of hp. It only took a couple more short clashes before we just had the last one to go.

Of course, things could never be that easy, could they?

As soon as the boss' third bar was depleted, it reared back, all three heads screeching out crazy, inhuman cries. Then, it stomped down, a huge shock-wave exploding outward and sending us flying a good distance away. At a distance, we watched shudders begin to run all through its body.

"Trash! Filth! Vermin! I'll destroy you, I'll rip you to shreds!" the left head screamed.

Then came the right head. "After I take your souls, I'm going to slash and break and corrupt them. Then I'll turn you into my own personal puppets and force you to be my slaves for all eternity!"

After that disturbing proclamation, the head in the middle opened its mouth, but didn't shout any more abuse at us. Instead, it started spewing out more of that dark fog. Only this time, it didn't stop. The fog slowly spread along the ground around it, and we took a number of steps back. Even as the one head released the equipment damaging fog, the massive creature approached, its curved sword and naginata raised high overhead.

When we dashed forward, it immediately swung its long weapon low. We jumped to avoid it again, but its other weapon darted down as soon as we did. We both turned, blocking the huge blade, but were thrown across the mountaintop again. Landing halfway on my feet, I skidded to a stop, looking up at the huge monster which seemed to just keep getting stronger. By now, a good deal of the arena had a layer of dark mist as high as my shins.

"We can't go head on, let's try flanking," Keiko advised.

"Yeah," I nodded. Taking off, we each ran along the sides, in opposite directions, until we came to each side of the beast. I was on its left side, meaning that if I could get past the naginata, I could deal some serious damage. Rushing in toward it as fast as I could, I threw myself forward, raising my sword as if to counter the overhand attack it swung down on me, then slipping neatly under the attack just as it touched my blade. Slamming straight into its side, I blasted it with Sword Skills as fast as I could.

After the minute Delay following its attack, instead of trying to follow up with another attack, probably because I was too close and out of its weapon's effective range, it instead turned and spewed more of that dark fog all over me. "Not going to work!" I grunted. Sure, it would damage my armor, but as long as my sword was ok, that kind of thing wouldn't stop my attacks. On the other side too, I could see it pouring even more of the fog out toward Keiko.

Despite that, we just kept laying into it, chopping away at its health until it fell all the way into the red. At that point, all three heads suddenly released the most god-awful shriek imaginable. So much so, I staggered backward holding my ears, still unable to block out the noise which felt like it was exploding all through my brain. Even after it ended, I could feel it ringing, reverberating over and over inside my brain.

Just when I managed to shake myself off and look back at the boss, I stopped again. It was still transforming. From beneath the three torsos, where the horse body was, the stubby brownish fur suddenly split apart, as if shedding its skin all at once. Through the gaps, there was just darkness. Even more darkness oozed out from the tears, which expanded farther and farther in just a few seconds. Then, the entire body split apart, shattering into shards of light. In its place, a strange black goo seemed to extend, spreading out all over the ground around it. Almost like some sort of jellyfish. The black ooze slowly traveled upward as well, covering the human torsos over and transforming them into a huge, oozing, wraith. And then, right in the middle of its forehead, a glimmer appeared. I squinted slightly, my perfect vision seeming to zero in on it. That- it was definitely the orb we needed!

However, to get it, we would have to beat this thing. As I looked at it, big tentacles of pure darkness snaked out in all directions. With each passing second, the dark cloud across the ground was rising higher and higher, already up to my thighs.

Staring at this abomination, now spreading its darkness all over, I couldn't contain myself anymore. "Just die already!" I screamed at it. Raising our swords, we dashed in. We just had to take out its last bit of life to win. Numerous tentacles lashed out, but I sliced them all apart before they even came close. When I reached the huge beast, I immediately swung at it with everything I had, one attack after another. With Keiko right at my side, we quickly began cutting it down. However, it was only moments before more tentacles sprouted, wrapping around us in an attempt to restrain our movements while the blobish mass which seemed like its own separate being at this point turned and started spewing out ever more of its smog all over us.

"Like that's enough to stop us!" Despite the restraints and darkness all around, we both just kept hacking away. However, our battered armor finally gave in to the tentacles' crushing grip and the prevalent smog's wear. Shattering all at once, the blue shards flew away in an instant. With that, the constricting darkness tightened, crushing my arms and legs in their iron grasp, so tight it felt like all my bones would shatter. In the corner of my vision, I saw our hp begin to drop swiftly as we both struggled to keep up our attacks through the sudden unbearable pain.

"Come on, just a little more!" I shouted. Despite its best efforts, we both continued to raise our weapons and bring them down as hard as we could, reducing its health to just a few more percent. That's when, with a terrible cry, the entire creature spontaneously combusted. With absolutely no warning, fire just appeared everywhere.

"Aaah!" Keiko screamed in pain. I grit my teeth, tears appearing in my eyes as I felt agonizing heat engulf me.

"God damn it just die!" I screamed, reverting to just hacking away with a basic «Vertical» over and over again. The thing was so close to dead already, it only took a few good swings before that last dots of its hp disappeared. The beast finally fell over, slumping to the ground dead. It's face, err... looking at it, it really didn't have a face. So, whatever body part it was, fell forward and landed on the ground in front of us, the orb embedded inside. Still bathed in flames, I reached out and snatched it, right out of the horrible thing.

As if that was the trigger, the huge monster suddenly started moving again. Oh my god that's right! It would have shattered if it was dead! Through my pain-hazy mind, the final line of the cryptic inscription read. 『However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』 As the beast reared up, I turned to see that it no longer had a cursor, nor any hp bars. Now it really was just a giant monster.

"Aaah!" we screamed, throwing ourselves in the opposite direction. With incredible speed, it darted in our direction, forcing us to roll out of the way again. However, it just kept following us, spewing more darkness and fire all around. In fact, the darkness on the ground was starting to catch fire too. Before long, we would get burned to a crisp. Before then, we had to find the way out of here!

"Where do we go?" I asked as we ran with the giant, flaming, dark... thing on our heels. Fire spread all around us as everything started to be covered by the dakness.

—_It hurts..._ That thought came from the crystal Ferin. In that form, she must be feeling the effects of the smog, I thought, looking around frantically. Fleet of foot to escape, what does that mean?

"It means run away!" Keiko screamed in response to my thoughts. So, we did just that. The only way off this mountain of doom was back the way we'd come. Since I could hardly see around me anymore, I looked straight up. Based on the floor above us, I turned back toward the center of Aincrad, the direction where the way down would be, and ran for it.

Throwing ourselves over the side, we fell quite a few meters before hitting the steep slope back down. Finally out of the flames, it was the first time I realized that _I_ was on fire too. Rolling side to side as we slid downward didn't help much at putting the flames out either. "Ah who cares! We have to get out of here!" I shouted when I couldn't put out the flames all over my clothes. Instead, I pulled my dagger back out of my inventory, as did Keiko.

"We have a problem!" Keiko shouted at me, over the rushing wind.

"What is it now?"

"We can't go back that way! We jumped off a cliff before, so we can't get back up!" Oh yeah, we had gone off that cliff right at the beginning, so unless we could climb back up somehow, there had to be a different way out. Except, the only path we'd seen this whole way was the one we'd taken. When I thought that, Keiko shook her head repeatedly. "Let's try going across the bridge!" Of course- we'd never seen what was on the other side, so it was likely that we could get out that way. Only, we'd have to swim back up the river to get there.

When more screeches echoed all around us, I looked all around, finding that more 『Winged Guardians』 had appeared, and were flying in from all sides. Not to mention the demonic being which was now tearing down the slope behind us. We didn't really have to worry about the former because we would reach the bottom long before they arrived.

Sliding the rest of the distance, we smacked into the flat ground below, hard. Rolling when we hit, we sprung back to our feet, about to start running when we both cut short. There were two more guardians here. The giant, stone monsters stood directly ahead, blocking the way to the river. With huge drop-offs to either side of the narrow path at the base of the mountain, if they even hit our weapons, we would be thrown into the canyon.

As I realized this, glancing behind to see the dark thing nearly reaching the base of the mountain, and the harpies even closer, I suddenly had an idea. "Keiko, we'll do 'that'." I said, projecting my plan through the bond in an instant.

"Got it, let's go!" We both dashed forward, straight toward the stone sentries. Kicking down hard, we used «Flash» to instantly teleport behind them. However, we didn't run for the river. Instead, we turned around and started shouting.

"Hey, stupid monsters! Come get us. Bleeehh!" Making faces and generally just taunting them while they turned around, we braced ourselves as they drew their huge swords into the air.

"This is either the best or worst idea ever," Keiko noted as we stood there. As the statues began to swing their weapons down toward us, we jumped high into the air. Except, they still had plenty of time to adjust their aim. Shifting their weapons upward, the huge stone blades flew right at us.

"Now!" we shouted at the same time. Turning in midair, we brought our swords around to block the attack across the flat of the blade, while placing our feet on the other side. Then, their weapons hit our own. A huge, jarring blast tore through my body, like getting hit by a train as its blade struck my own. The crazy force sent me flying backward. Except, that's what we wanted this time. Flying over the river, we quickly gained a great deal of distance from the dark monster which was chasing us. It ran right into the river, its dark sludge-like body spreading up the current as it dragged its massive body upward.

Spreading out to catch the air as much as we could, we sailed a couple meters above the water level for a few more seconds before coming down with a splash. It nearly knocked the air out of my lungs, but I shook it off and resurfaced as fast as I could. At least it put out the flames on my clothes. We'd gained a big lead doing that, but swimming upriver, we'd have to be fast or it would still catch up.

Looking back toward the other side of the floating castle as I swam, I saw the last rays of sunlight as the light sank below the mountains all the way on the opposite side. We were going to have to run from this thing in the dark? Great, I thought sarcastically. Despite our frantic efforts, swimming was slow against the strong current, and we barely made headway. The former boss was quickly catching up, until we finally reached the area with the spikes. Before they had just served to slow us down, but now they were a great help. We could climb them, sideways. Quickly jumping up the river from one spike to the next, we navigated back through the maze of spikes in a fraction of the time we'd taken going downriver. Even so, the demonic thing was nearly on top of us again.

Once we got back to the bridge in the little safe spot near the riverbank, I said, "We don't have time to screw with this bridge!" Kicking hard against the bank, I activated «Flash» again, jumping all the way over to the far side, onto the shore. Keiko followed in a moment, and we dashed away as fast as we could, the huge monster rising up over the side just a few seconds after us.

Back on land, we tore down the path as fast as we possibly could, only to be blocked by a sudden horde of monsters. I didn't even register what kind or how many there were, I just swung my sword with all my might, blasting a path through and ignoring the cuts I received in the process. As much as we tried, they still slowed us down, allowing the dark monster to gain on us again.

"Out of the way!" we shouted, along with a number of other things, while we hacked away, forcing a path through. Then we got clear of the mobs, and up ahead was a big door. Smashing into it with everything we had, it crashed open to either side. We kicked hard again to regain our momentum, flaming darkness exploding through the doorway behind us. All around, red cursors appeared in my vision. More monsters, everywhere. I glanced over to my hp, a little above half. «Battle Healing», definitely the best skill we ever took.

While that thought played through my mind, my eyes flashed in every direction, picking out enemies and other things which may be important. There seemed to be lots of goblins in particular. And workbenches, lots of workbenches everywhere. I swept my hand across a few of them as we ran past, grabbing whatever was on top and throwing it into my open inventory window. I'd look at it later sometime. Then we passed a crossroads between the workspaces, the path splitting in three directions. Already running as fast as we could, we had no chance to change direction and just kept running ahead.

Monsters started jumping into our path and we swept them aside without a thought. Then I spotted something ahead. Standing above our heads, with a strange inner glow, it felt out of place in the dark room. It was one of those giant, magical teleporting crystals! Just like the one that got us out of that crazy underground lair with the elves last Christmas. While the one back then had looked more like a door, this one had more of a rocky appearance, similar to the huge boulder we'd had to break for that hermit. Running straight toward it, we threw ourselves against the crystal, the teleport effect sweeping us away.

Falling from our own momentum after the teleport ended, we looked up. We hadn't made it to safety. This was still a dangerous area, another workshop like the one we'd just come from. Glancing back, there was another magic rock there. Apparently it led to another teleport stone, unlike the elves'. As I looked, a huge blue teleport effect appeared, the demonic monster thing appearing directly behind us. Running away again as fast as we could, we tore through this new area. We passed another split, going in three more directions, and kept running forward again, dark flames licking at our heels again. As we ran, it seemed that the goblins had all fled the room, so we picked up our pace as fast as we could and started gaining distance from the beast.

Ahead, we spotted another stone and threw ourselves into it, teleporting away again. This time, we landed, rolling back to our feet as we kept running. It looked like the same workshop again. The monster appeared a little ways behind us, and we kept running until we came to another crossroads. Only this time, we cut short. Ahead, we saw big doors smashed in, like the ones we'd burst through.

Don't tell me- Before I could finish that thought, Keiko grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the right hand path. We ran into the next teleport crystal ahead, warping into the next area and tearing through the next few meters before we skidded to a stop again. Up ahead, the flaming thing had stopped, turning back to face us again.

We're jumping around in the same room?! As I realized this, the monster charged. We spun in place and ran back into the stone we'd just come from, falling out the other side with leftover fire already burning all over the floor under us. We scrambled up and made another mad dash as it appeared behind us again. In this state, I couldn't even begin to try and figure out the way these magic rocks teleported us, so we just ran straight forward again and hoped for the best. Thankfully, it worked this time, because we wound up in a completely new area. Brown stone walls all around, a close ceiling, and torches lining both walls.

However, that's not what drew most of my attention. I was more worried about the big panel on the floor which sank when we landed on it. "Run!" scrambling forward on all fours, we took to our feet and flew down the long hall as spikes shot from the walls and floor behind. As we ran, more traps exploded, but different than usual. They weren't all being triggered; I could tell because they weren't going off one by one but all at once. That panel had started this hallway-of-death type of trap. Of course, even with all of this, the flaming demon thing was still chasing us from behind.

Swinging around a right hand turn, the floor suddenly started to fall out beneath us, and we leaped over the gap, landing just in time for the next piece to begin falling away too. A number of jumps took us across this stretch of floor before jets of fire erupted all in front of us. I glanced back, seeing the monster flowing over the hallway, spikes and fire having no effect on it whatsoever while it started to catch up.

Sliding under a torrent of flames, we rounded another right hand turn. Looking forward, this hallway was much longer than the others. However, up ahead, there was a huge wall of spikes coming toward us. Though I wasn't sure what we'd be doing next, the only way to go was forward. As heat began to lick at my heels, we ran forward again. No more traps went off for some time as we ran with everything we had. However, the only thing I could see ahead was the slowly moving wall of spikes.

As we began to close in on the spikes, sudden jets of fire blew from the walls. We ran right through, ignoring the minor damage from the fires. More jets fired off as we tore through them. Then, right before we hit the spikes, an opening on the left came into view. We swung around the corner, just before the spikes reached it, and entered a smaller, darker corridor where only one of us could fit, so we had to run one behind the other. Having been on the right side before the turn, I was in back.

There were no torches in this tight corridor, the only light coming in diffusely from the next hall. As we reached the next area, the horrible monster suddenly appeared at the entrance. Throwing our arms up to shield ourselves, we ran through the fire and the destructive fog, making the turn away from it and sprinting as fast as we could to gain more distance. Then, the whole floor began to rise up underneath us, trying to crush us against the low ceiling. We bent low and kept up the fastest sprint we could, reaching the end of the crushing platforms and sliding through the narrow gap that remained.

Falling to the floor below and rolling, I drew my weapons as numerous goblins blocked the path. Flinging out a «Double Undercut» to take out one and a tight «Whirl» to finish a few more, I stepped in and cut through the last couple with a single horizontal slash. Past that, there was a staircase. However, stairs were far too slow, so we jumped straight down, past the entire flight of stairs to hit a landing some meters below. Hardly even feeling the intense shock from the high fall, we leaped down the next flight, sheathing our weapons in the process. One more jump and we hit the bottom, rolling out of the fall and dashing forward again.

A screech ahead told me there was still more to come. We turned a corner, entering a little wider area, entirely filled with skeleton monsters. Rushing forward with everything I had, I drew my sword again, using «Flash Draw» to blow away an entire group of them before bringing out my dagger as well and charging. Blades and maces and every other type of weapon I could name struck out from everywhere, but we just kept moving forward, hardly slipping out of the way of attacks before blowing away more skeletons, four or five at a time even.

At some point, all I recognized anymore were the lines drawn in the air by the Sword Skills I unleashed from my weapon and the dangerous objects which I twisted and rolled and dashed to avoid. Even so, I felt many of them reach their target, marked by dull pains which echoed into my brain from all over my body. At the same time, fire and darkness began to burn at my back. And then... there were no more monsters. No more weapons biting into me. I ran, forward, my senses slowly returning as we hit an upward slope, forcing our way up as fast as we could. Everything behind us fell into absolute darkness.

At the top of the slope, we ran again, down a long, long, stretch of hallway, apparently without traps. This allowed us to gain a big lead on the beast again, as we approached yet another teleport crystal. Please just get us out of here already! However, just before we reached it, a big section of the floor fell away in front of it. Kicking down hard, we jumped across the wide gap, hitting the magical stone and disappearing.

Falling out on the other side, we rolled quickly to our feet. Instead of a rocky corridor, we were now surrounded entirely by lava. As if inside a sort of bubble, lava hovered in every direction, on all sides and even above us. Agonizing heat permeated everything, and large monsters which appeared to be made of lava rock stood in our path. Gritting my teeth hard, we ran forward once more.

The rock giants turned our way as we came close, raising their huge fists up into the lava overhead, then striking down, releasing a waterfall of the deadly liquid rock from the intangible ceiling. At the same time, this entire bubble seemed to destabilize, shrinking slowly. It started with just a few drops of magma leaking down through the bubble.

As we ran with everything in us, the space shrunk quickly, and soon larger torrents of magma burst in behind us, filling the entire space. But ahead, there was another stone. We just had to get there before it caught us. However, there was less and less space, and eventually there was no dodging the small droplets which leaked in all around.

"Gah!" I couldn't help the pained scream which escaped my mouth as a few drops sprinkled across my shoulders, burning straight through my clothes and burning intensely on my skin, like nothing I'd ever felt before. But we were almost to the stone. One more push, and we leaped through the ever shrinking space, right through a few more trickles of agonizing lava and touched the stone. The terrifying scene vanished, and we again appeared in an area made of stone.

It was wider here, with many torches set up near the ceiling. And there was another stone directly ahead. However... there was a horde of monsters between us and the stone. Then, from another hall, that demonic dark thing entered the room, no longer coming after us but instead taking up position directly in front of the stone. Looking at this scene, we both gulped.

After letting out a shaky breath, we both drank down an expensive healing potion and drew our weapons. "Uuooohhh!" we screamed, charging head first into the swarm of goblins, skeletons, zombies, lizardmen, kobolds, and a whole lot of things I couldn't even begin to identify. Spinning in every direction, I lashed out with one Sword Skill after another, blasting entire groups away with each powerful slash. Red seemed to cover everything as the cursors all around glared in my vision. With each slash, it seemed like a little bit of the red disappeared.

Despite the sounds of raging steel and monstrous howls, the only thing I could hear was my own screaming with every swing of my blades. Anything I looked at directly vanished into shards of blue glass within a moment, only to be followed by five more just like it. And in the midst of all this, a dark fog began to hang over everything. My senses screamed as weapons tore at me from all sides, but the little green bar in the corner of my vision said it would be ok. So I just kept on, with everything I had, until the red was gone, and there was only black left.

Facing down the giant blob of black corruption, I stared, hardly able to make my eyes focus. Now that I wasn't screaming anymore, I could hear a beat pounding in my head, like a heartbeat. My heartbeat. Like a jackhammer.

"GET OUT OF OUR WAY!" I screamed, charging forward. Swinging both of my weapons wildly, I flew straight through the dark fire in a moment, coming out on the other side, straight into the glowing teleport crystal. The rock warped us away that instant, dropping us onto a hard rock floor.

We rolled back out of the fall again. There were more enemies all around us. Going back to back, we pointed our weapons in both directions, waiting for them to come. Staring straight without blinking, we held like that for a few seconds, but none of them stepped forward. Then, one did, and we both spun, weapons raised, but it was still out of range.

As I stared at the next enemy, waiting for it to make its move, I blinked a few times. My hands were shaking badly. Still staring, more information slowly started to filter into my mind. That cursor wasn't red. It was green. Blinking again, I fought to focus on the thing in front of me. After a few tries, the face came into view. It was a face I knew. I couldn't place the name, but I knew the face. A girl's face. Looking around again, I finally realized that these weren't monsters, they were other people. As soon as we both reached this realization, our legs gave out under us, and we fell flat on our butts, weapons clanking against the ground and legs splayed out to either side.

Looking up at the person I knew, I could see she was speaking, but I couldn't hear her over my hammering pulse. Staring at her for a few seconds, she kept talking. Then, she waved her hand in front of us, and we blinked again, at the same time.

After a minute like this, she stepped carefully forward and grabbed us both around our backs, helping us to our feet. I felt my arms, like lead, hanging with my weapons still clenched in my fists.

From there, she walked us forward, everyone moving quickly aside to make a path.


	125. Chapter 118

**After the Battle**** Chapter 118**

The walk wasn't long before we entered a building. She lead us a little farther, then slowly sat us down on something rather soft. As soon as we were situated, she ran off quickly. Still staring straight ahead, I blinked once in a while and my pulse eventually came under control again. It didn't take very long before I finally realized that I was totally spaced out, though I still couldn't manage to do anything about it.

After that, the blank, numb feeling across my skin receded. Unfortunately, searing, horribly burning pain replaced it, all across my shoulders and chest. Still, my arms hung limp at my sides, despite my hands remaining clamped so hard around the hilts of my weapons that I might have shattered less durable blades.

I became aware of more people around me, and as my heart continued to slow, bits of speech reached my consciousness. All around us, a small crowd had assembled, more joining all the time. I caught little bits about weapons, something about clothes, but none of it really caught in my mind, it just flowed over me like water.

Then, like the flick of a switch, the situation suddenly came into view. Not entirely, but I realized parts of what was happening. We were sitting in a room. There were a lot of people around, all staring at us. Despite the large crowd, it was strangely quiet. I picked out the small voice of someone whispering to another young man close by, off to my right side.

"Hey, you ever seen a sword like that before?"

"No man, you?"

"Nah, not me..."

"Where do you think they got them?" a third hushed voice joined their conversation.

"Gotta be from up on the frontlines."

"No way. I have a few friends up there and none of them have stuff like that."

"Then what, Boss Drops?"

"Maybe, I've heard Bosses drop stuff so powerful, a lot of it is Unique..." Their conversation went on, but my hearing slowly phased out again as a heavy fatigue, like steel block, settled over me. Now that my pulse had slowed down, my adrenaline rush was wearing off. Glancing around again, I recognized the room. We were back in the sleeping quarters in the «Black Iron Castle». Well, as long as we were safe again, everything was fine.

Knowing we were safe, I wanted to give into the fatigue and pass out right where I was sitting. However, as my consciousness cleared, the burning pain all over my torso was growing worse, a lot worse.

My head slowly tilted downward to look at myself... There were still small flecks of lava sticking to me... all over. They sat directly on my skin, having burnt away my clothes anywhere they landed. As soon as I realized this, I wanted to start screaming, but found myself without the strength to even open my mouth.

After sitting there for a few more seconds, the girl from before returned. I recognized her now, Yulier. She was walking quickly toward us with Thinker in tow. When they reached us, they both began talking with serious voices, though my mind couldn't process anything they were saying anymore. After a minute, Thinker pointed at Keiko while he spoke. I was too screwed up to sense anything through our bond, so I had no idea how she was doing at this point.

His finger then switched to me as he spoke, a look of surprise appearing on his face. Then, he leaned over and touched my shoulder. His eyes widened, then he grabbed the closest blanket off of a bed and started wiping the lava off of us. The burning pain all across my body quickly dulled once the lava had been removed. With blanket reduced to a smoldering rag, Thinker turned and threw it out of the room shortly before it caught fire, shattering into nothing.

As I sat there, dull aches over every bit of me, I let out a long, relieved breath. Even feeling all banged and bruised up was wonderful compared to that. With the last barrier to sleep removed, my eyes fell closed before I knew it, and I was gone.

_Author Note: Gah, that's it! I'm just going to post this. This chapter has been fighting me for like 3 days now, and this is all I could write. -_-_


	126. Chapter 119

**Recovery**** Chapter 119**

I woke up some time later, slowly lifting my eyelids to stare at the ceiling. Lying there like that, I realized that, unlike usual, the pain hadn't faded from that last battle. Well, all the regular attacks had, but I still felt a terrible stinging sensation all over my neck and chest where the lava had burnt me. Was it really so bad that it would still hurt now, however many hours later? Easily pushing myself up from the cot where I was lying side by side with my sister, I looked around to see that the room was mostly empty. The only other people here were the few guys in beds on the outer edges of the room, apparently asleep. I opened my menu and saw that it was almost 1:30 in the morning, so that wasn't a surprise.

I obviously had my strength still, but seeing how it was too early to do anything, and the burning sensation all over my chest wasn't going away, I decided I'd rather just roll over and go back to sleep. Turning over, I closed my eyes again. On the outside, I seemed to be ok now, but inside I was still pretty tired. That made it easier to just drift back off to sleep.

…

I woke up again the following morning. I could tell it was morning even before I opened my eyes because I could hear a number of people moving around. Glancing around though slitted eyes to hide that I'd woken up, I saw that people were going about their everyday business without paying us much mind. By my guess, we'd been sleeping for a solid day or two, so they were probably used to us being here by now. No doubt that would change once we got up again though.

Lifting the thin blanket over me a faint few centimeters, I saw that, surprisingly, I was still dressed. However, I wasn't in my normal clothes. Instead, I had some of my random spares on. Eyes shifting to the side, I saw that Keiko was the same. That's right, hadn't our clothes been _on fire_ when we got back here? My guess is that Thinker or Yulier (one being the only man with good sense, and the other actually being a girl) had us dressed again since I'm sure there wasn't much left of our old clothes. Of course, the random things we had now hardly even covered our underwear, but just the fact that it wasn't our underwear was probably the point.

I sat up in bed, drawing the attention of everyone around. Glancing around, I asked, "Hey, what day is it?"

After a few seconds of awkward silence, one guy answered, "March sixth." Well, that's not bad at all, I thought. Since we'd gone on that crazy quest all day on the fourth, that meant we'd slept through the fifth, just one day. Not even close to our worst recovery period after doing something crazy. Except for the stinging pain I still felt all over...

"Hey, I still feel this kind of stinging sensation," I explained, "Is that normal?"

"That must mean you're still under the «Burn» status effect. It causes damage over time outside towns. Though, it's pretty weird that it would last this long..."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "We had_ lava_ poured on us..." That really shouldn't need much more explanation. It's lava! The kind of stuff that can kill you just by touching it on Earth!

"I see..." a number of the surrounding men said in low voices.

"Here I have some anti-burn potions on me." One approached, offering the potions. I accepted them and began to lift one to my lips when he suddenly started waving his arms frantically. "You don't drink them!" He exclaimed, and I stopped. "You have to tap it and activate it. Then it'll heal burns wherever you touch until the potion runs out. I did as he said, activating the potion, and a glow appeared around the palm of my hand. I ran my hand along the top of my shoulders, finding that it instantly relieved the pain wherever I touched. Then, the potion shattered. It probably wasn't meant to heal burns over the entire top of a person's body...

"Thanks a lot," I said with a smile. I would need to get more of the potions to finish healing all the burns, so that's what I had in mind to do next. Picking up Keiko while she was still asleep, I had her curl her arms around my shoulders while I held her legs around me to keep her on my back.

Giving her a piggyback ride like that, I slowly walked back out of the castle, much to the surprise (and amusement) of everyone who saw. With my Strength, carrying her was no problem- and they had unequipped our weapons while we slept, making it even easier.

Since I found it unlikely to find the potions I was looking for easily in the «Starting City», with it being huge and having a million different shops which all sold different items, I warped up to the third floor. Being a mid-level floor, there were a number of people around now. It wasn't quite as crowded as the frontline, but there were a lot more than there used to be, it wasn't like everything between the first floor and the frontline was deserted anymore.

Making my way through the slightly crowded streets wasn't too difficult. No one seemed to want to walk in the way of a girl hardly dressed in anything, giving another _sleeping_ girl a piggyback ride. Well, except for the ones who were too dumbstruck to move.

Walking into the clearly marked potions shop, I asked the NPC to what they had and bought the potions. It was a bit tricky to operate the menu while holding Keiko on my back, but I managed, and the potions were pretty cheap too. From there, I walked back to the two intertwined trees which formed the «Teleport Gate» on this floor and went up to the eighth floor. It was also a forest floor, mostly populated by elves, and our Inn room was still here, as it had been since we relocated the day the floor opened. So far, this had to be my favorite floor. Nice forest, without all the mist and monsters waiting in ambush like on the third floor.

Entering the familiar room we'd been staying in for close to a month now, I laid Keiko down on the bed. Having been carried around for a while, she was starting to stir from her sleep. Once she woke up, she would feel the same way I did, so it was a good thing I had the burn potions already.

Before she came to, I took off my clothes so I could finish healing my burns. To my surprise, it seemed that my underwear had burned with everything else. I snapped my eyes shut when I realized. Until now, I'd refused to look at myself in anything less than underwear. I really have to make us some new clothes... I thought sullenly as I activated the potion and quickly spread the healing potion over anything which still hurt. The whole time, I kept my eyes closed, still unwilling to see myself naked.

When I finished, I operated my menu to put my temporary clothes back on, and finally opened my eyes. Unfortunately, I couldn't really reach the back of my shoulders, so I'd need to have Keiko do that for me. With her still on the bed, I rolled her over onto her stomach and sat next to her, rubbing some into her back before she woke.

Shortly after I finished that, she finally, she woke up. Looking up at me with sleepy eyes, she said, "Onii-chan, my chest hurts."

"Here." I plopped the potion on her open hand lying on the bed and she lifted it up to see it. "Rub it wherever it stings and the pain will go away." She did just that, letting out a relieved sigh, the same way I did when I'd felt the pain recede for the first time. I turned around so she could do her chest, then had her finish up with my back, and we were finally done.

Flopping down on the bed, we both stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes. "Ahh, much better..." I mumbled. With that final traces of that last battle gone, I felt like I could move on again. We still had three more orbs to collect, and I didn't expect any of the trials ahead to be any easier than the first. We were going to need better equipment, more levels, maybe some more people to help us too... As vague plans began to form in my mind, I didn't notice my eyelids beginning to droop closed until I was already asleep again.

_Author Note: I can't believe I actually made an entire chapter about that. *facepalm* I'm not sure if it would be better to just think of it as a fanservice chapter, or worse. -_-;_


	127. Chapter 120

**Masterpiece**** Chapter 120**

_Author Note: Sorry for the delay, RL won't give me a break. :(_

The next morning, we woke up sprawled awkwardly across the bed, but we felt great. Completely recovered. After a brief discussion, we decided on what we'd do next. First off, I opened up a message to Thinker. 『Working on something, we won't be around.』 That should be good enough, I shrugged and sent the message.

With that done, we had no obligations, so we could spend our time however we needed. And right now, we needed to get ourselves battle-ready again. With not only our armor, but all of our clothes destroyed as well, it really looked like it was the time to get on top of that. But before that, we decided to check over our stats and items.

Starting with the items, everything new looked like trash mats and basic gear. There wasn't anything inside marked 'boss drop'. I'd struck the killing blow on the boss and we hadn't gotten anything. So, Keiko really did have to get the last attack for us to get Boss Drops. We both agreed that unless it was a serious emergency, we'd make sure to let her get the LA from now on.

As for our stats, we'd leveled up again, to level 29. Our weapon skills had increased some, but not all that much. Both were at 239 right now. However, our «Battle Healing» and «Sprint» had made big jumps, so that they were nearly as high as our weapon skills, both hanging around level 220. Probably because we'd spent the whole time running around like crazy, while taking a ton of damage. It was a good thing our regeneration was high enough to keep our hp from falling very low at that time. Even with everything going on, we usually hadn't gone far below half health. That left our crafting skills the lowest now (not counting the strange «Martial Arts» skill we never intended to learn, or «Blessed Twins».) We hadn't done much with them in the past few days, and it was starting to show with the growing level gap.

Dropping that train of thought, I switched my focus to what came next. We'd deal with that later. For now, we had to get some proper clothes. And by get, I meant make. Since these were going to be real clothes and not just scraps to level up our skills, we were going to need some more stuff.

We grabbed our «Vendor's Carpet» and left the inn. Searched through all the main towns, we went up floor by floor until we reached the tenth. I tried to ignore the staring eyes, but it didn't do much good. By the time we came to the tenth floor, we had found quite a few dyes to use. And I felt like I would collapse. Rolling our carpet out on the ground, we dumped all our necessary supplies onto it while shoving the anvil out of the way.

From there, we talked over just what we wanted to wear. Of course Keiko insisted that it look good. I ok'd that, but asked "shouldn't it be fire resistant?" that is what destroyed our last set after all. Of course she agreed, so we asked Argo where we could get fire resistant material. She told us about fire lizards in the fifth floor deserts which dropped what we needed. Without even packing up our carpet, (since no one could move it anyway) we warped down there and killed a couple. It only took a few minutes before we were sitting back on our carpet again.

"So, what else?" I asked.

"Maybe waterproof, we fall in water a lot too."

"And by 'we' you mean me," I stated with a huff. She gave me an 'I'm innocent' smile, but I just glared at her while I sent another message to Argo. However, her response this time was there there wasn't any material which would do that. Forgetting that idea, I asked base material she would want it be primarily made of.

"Silk!" she shouted immediately, raising her hand for no reason.

"Why silk?"

"Because silk is comfortable," she grinned widely. Shrugging my shoulders a few times, I asked after the item locations. This time, Argo replied that there were giant spiders with very high quality silk on the eighth floor. She also tagged on a question about why we were looking for specific items.

In response, to her question, I asked if she would stop overcharging us for info. With the few bits she'd given us, we were already up to a four thousand Col bill. She sent a grudging acceptance back, saying that whatever I told her would be one more thing she could sell anyway. I grinned at that, she really would sell anything, wouldn't she? Shaking off the bit of nostalgia, I answered that we were making ourselves some new clothes.

Argo sent back a pouting reply that no one would pay for information like that, then added that clothes made with silk wouldn't be durable enough. There were some beast hides in the hostile elven villages on the eighth floor which would increase the durability. Then she charged us for the info.

『But we never asked about that!』 I sent back, but thanked her anyway. From there, we ran off to the eighth floor to collect the materials. It didn't take long to find the beast hides, but we spent a bit of time killing the spiders, to make sure we would have enough silk.

Arriving back at our carpet, we dumped more mats on the growing pile. Then, we looked at each other, both wondering if that was everything we would need. Nodding, we moved on. First things first, I started with our missing underwear. From memory of how it looked on me, I started with a bra. I tried not to really think about it and made it quickly. It was a basic white silk without anything added, since it was just underwear. Then, I handed it over to Keiko. She dropped it into our inventory and equipped it.

The moment it appeared under the bit of cloth covering her, she let out a groan and fell onto her side while frantically tapping at her menu until she unequipped it again. "Gah, are you trying to strangle me? That was _way_ too tight," she moaned, holding her chest with a pained look.

"Ah, sorry sorry," I scratched my head, then made another.

"Still too tight," she gasped out after taking off the second one.

"Why don't you make it then?" I huffed.

"Because you're better at this than I am. If I made it, it wouldn't be any good," she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

"Is that so..." I grumbled. "Then why has all the stuff I made until now fit?"

After a moment, Keiko made a gesture down at what was little more than a strip of cloth covering her breasts. "You call this 'fitting'?"

"I see your point... So what do you propose?"

Already anticipating the question, she replied, "We need to take our measurements."

"Ok, but do they have a tape measure here?" I raised an eyebrow and she shrugged. We went over to the crafting store, and it turned out that they did in fact, have tape measures. We bought one and left the shop. Since neither of us felt comfortable taking our measurements in public, we rented an inn room for a bit.

Since we were identical, we would only need one set of measurements. Standing in the room, Keiko volunteered to take mine. When I asked why, she said it was because she'd be too embarrassed.

"..." I stood there, unsure of how to even respond to that one. So, I just stood there while she took them all, noting each down on a pad of paper. Once finished, we went back to our carpet and I took another shot at it. It was pretty troublesome comparing what I was working on to the tape measure she held up behind it, but I managed to get it finished somehow.

Looking at the size of the bra, I couldn't help by blush as I averted my eyes. Seeing it made me realize just how abnormally large our breasts were. It didn't help that I would have to make a second one. But first, Keiko tried it on and gave an ok on the size. So, I made a second, just like it.

Looking at the menu, I hesitated for a moment. As a man, I really didn't want to make the knowing decision to put a bra on, but I told myself it was necessary, and dragged it over to equip. In the next moment, a soft, comfortable feeling appeared around my chest, supporting the heavy weight which had been hanging against my... I couldn't bring myself to call it a shirt.

"Ahh..." after letting out that sigh, I shook myself. Hadn't I been against that just a moment ago?! Sighing again, dejectedly this time, I moved on to the panties. Now that I had the measurements, it was no problem to put the simple piece of clothing together.

With that problem taken care of, we moved on to the important part. Our actual clothing.

"So, what kind of clothing-"

"Kimono!" She shouted, raising her hand again.

"Kimono?! Why?" my mouth fell open as I realized what she was asking for.

"Why not? Kimonos would be cool," she answered as if that made all the sense in the world.

"Ok, but how am _I_ supposed to make something like _that_?" Being a guy, I'd never payed much attention before because they were pretty plain. But those were for men. Women's kimonos were on an _entirely_ different level. They had all sorts of accessories and colors, and formality and... and... a bunch of other stuff which I couldn't even begin to describe. And she expected me to make them?

"Well, I can help I guess," she smiled.

"Help how exactly?" I inquired, not really expecting much.

"Hmm, how to help... I could draw it for you. That should help, right?" She grabbed up the pad of paper and the pencil and started scribbling away. I waited for a few minutes while she worked. She was pretty good at art the last I could remember, not great though. But, that was from a while ago, probably before middle school.

After some time, she turned back to me, holding up the paper and asking, "could you make it based off of this?" I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the picture. While it wasn't amazing, it was very well done.

"You drew that from memory?" I asked, bewildered.

"Yeah, Mom had this one Kimono that I always stared at as a kid. It was so beautiful..." She grinned widely while closing her eyes. So that's how it was, it was something she'd memorized when she was younger, and it still stuck with her. With her artistic skills pretty much satisfactory for bringing that mental picture out on paper. Looks like I'd be taking a shot at this after all. "Ok, just let me draw up a picture of how I want it to look..." Keiko said, while flipping to another page and beginning to draw.

While she worked on that, I wondered about how this would all work out. If we somehow managed to actually make these, we would stick our _way_ more than ever before. Hell, you would stick out walking around in Japan in a Kimono these days, why would it make any more sense in this world, where the styles were even more western? I posed this question to my sister as she drew, and her only response was that it would be nice to wear Japanese clothes at least. Besides, they wouldn't get dirty from us wearing them here like they would on Earth.

I had to agree with that one, our parents always made such a big deal about how much of a hassle it was to take care of them after we wore them out to formal events. Well, we wouldn't have to worry about that here. My main concerns were be how well we could move in them, and getting them destroyed while fighting.

"..."

When that went through my mind, one other thing did as well. "Hey Keiko, what kind of armor are we going to wear?"

"I'm not sure yet, why?"

"Because, what kind of armor will we actually be able to wear over something like that?"

"...Good point..." she muttered, looking up from her drawing for the first time. I glanced at it over her shoulder, and the picture completely derailed my previous train of thought.

"How do you expect me to put that sort of pattern on it?" I gasped, seeing a large pattern swirling all across the proposed garment. Since it was only in pencil, it was in black and white, but surely it was supposed to be strikingly colorful.

"I was thinking we just take other pieces and... attach..." she trailed off as she had an idea, her mouth hanging open slightly. "Haha, I have a brilliant idea!"

"Yeah, that is a good idea," I responded.

"No fair! Don't take the idea out of my head, I wanted to announce it!" She puffed out her cheeks angrily.

"Just pretend I didn't say anything," I raised my hands in defeat, so she would go on.

"We make the pattern the armor!" she shouted excitedly. Of course, since I already knew, all she accomplished was startling everyone walking past.

"Hey hey, quiet down a bit at least..." I moaned. Still, her idea made sense... sort of. If we could somehow manage to make small pieces of armor in the shapes of the patterns she drew, then attach them to the kimono as I made it, it might actually work. The rest of this was such a long-shot already that I didn't even care anymore. It would all work our one way or another.

However, another problem with our plan came to mind then. If the pattern would be created with many small pieces of armor, we would need an ingot for each and every one of the pieces. Not to mention, if we wanted those tiny little things to actually offer any sort of protection, they would need to be some seriously high quality ingots. Thinking that, I sent Argo another message.

『What are the highest quality ingots or ores available right now? Nothing Unique though, something we can get a lot of.』

Her reply came instantly, as usual. I still couldn't figure out how she could type so much, so fast... 『The best non-Unique available are «Daimond Slivers». They drop from the 『Orochi Elite Guards』 on the tenth floor. +500 Col.』 I considered the information for a minute. Tenth floor, huh? Those sort of monsters could be tricky to kill. And we would probably need to kill quite a few.

『Where are they?』

『Tenth floor dungeon. Be careful. +500 Col.』 I couldn't help but grin. She'd split the information into two parts just so she could charge us twice. However, I raised my eyebrow after a moment. She'd actually said to be careful. Were they that strong?

"Hey Keiko, if we're going through with your plan, we need more materials," I said. She picked up the rest through our bond and waved me over. Scooting forward on the carpet, she held up the picture so I could see. My eyes widened automatically when I saw it. The dress was beautiful, even if the drawing was a bit scratchy in places.

"This is what I want you to make," she stated firmly. I gulped, could I really craft something like that with my own hands?

"T,then the next thing to do," I let out a breath, "is go hunting."

…

An hour later, we returned to the elven town, collapsing back onto our carpet in a heap. Compared to the little bit of clothing we'd had earlier, we may as well have been naked now.

"That dungeon... so many traps..." I mumbled at the ninth floor. In the all the chaos, we'd managed to at least land hits on some of the monsters we were targeting, so we got the drops when they died to all the traps. However, we were hardly able to avoid their strange, jumpy attacks. So much so, that we'd leveled up «Battle Healing» another five times.

Well, all told, we'd collected three hundred of the «Diamond Slivers». That just _had_ to be enough for our new clothes... right? After a little while, we regained enough strength to sit up again. The it still wasn't late yet, the sun wasn't even showing between here and the next floor, so we still had quite a bit of time in the day.

Getting back to work, we sat down and went over the design. Keiko pointed out specific important points, like where the seams went over the shoulders and attached to the sleeves. Apparently, this had to be made out of a single cloth, split into four large sections. Two at the back, and one for each sleeve. I started out practicing with some basic fabric, just to see if I could get the general proportions right. According to Keiko, since we were 125 centimeters (4.1 ft) to the shoulders, I should make the total height 135 centimeter. I wondered why it should be too tall, and she explained that a women's kimono had a tucked spot a little above the waist, so it had to be a little taller.

Following all of her directions, I formed the fabric with the correct dimensions, creating seams where they should be. After the four main sections, I added the smaller front parts below the waist, and the collar, which I had to keep redoing because apparently it had to look just right. By the time I finished, I'd nearly exhausted the entire ten minute limit. I would have to make the kimono much faster if I wanted to have any time left over to actually put on the patterns.

Sighing repeatedly, I remade the kimono a number of times over. Once I had the basic shape just the way Keiko wanted it, she tried it on. Of course, we didn't have any of the crazy accessories kimonos required. She explained that she would need a himo(2) to keep it closed, so I pulled up another piece of basic fabric. Among the many options for things to create, there was a cord, so I chose that. Of course, just being a long strip of fabric, all I had to do was take the piece down to a short width, then stretch it out a little ways.

Tossing the himo over to her, she pulled up the kimono some and tied it off, pointing out the tucked part where the extra length I'd put into it went. The shape looked about the same as the kimonos everyone wore for New Years, even if the whole thing was as blank as a sheet of white paper. With a sidelong glance, I noticed that even on the relatively deserted eighth floor, the basic, unfinished design for a kimono was drawing eyes.

"Iyaa-pu" that cry came from Keiko and my eyes flicked back, just in time to see her fall right on her face- the cause of that strange final sound of her shout.

"What happened?" I asked, moving forward to help her up.

"I forgot how hard it is to move in a kimono, so I tripped as soon as I tried to walk," she explained.

"Didn't I say that earlier?" I sighed. "It's not even done yet and you can't walk in one, how to you expect us to fight in them?"

"Don't worry, I'll fix it," she said, though I couldn't sense any particular idea in her head about how to do that as the words left her mouth.

"Ok, ok," I sighed. "Well, you think about that while we work on the design pieces-"

"That won't work."

"How come?" I asked after she cut me off.

"They have to be sized correctly for the kimono, and I'm going to have to change that to make it so we can fight in them..." Dragging herself over to the anvil, where her pad of paper rested, she started scribbling away again.

Sighing yet again, I mumbled to myself, "what am I supposed to do in the meantime?" With no answer to that, I just sat down against the building wall at the back of our carpet and waited. For a little while, the frantic scribbling sounds continued and Keiko made numerous small noises, of all kinds. Some happy, when she had an idea, some angry, when it didn't work out, and some that were in between, and seemed to have all sorts of other meanings.

Until finally, she turned back with a, "Finished!" I took the pad and looked closely at her picture. Unlike the previous ones, this design had the kimono split at the front. I'd never seen one like that before. In fact, it probably wasn't even done. Well, it's not like anyone would care in this world if we wore them wrong. Looking over at a second sketch, which showed the way each of the sections were made, I saw that instead of straight rectangles, she'd widened the largest ones which would go at the back down at the bottom, while also shortening the smaller ones near the front. So that's why it would split like that...

"Ok, I like it," I ok'd the design. From there, I got to work again. Now that I had the basics down, it was much easier to create the right shape, even with the modifications. After three more tries, I could create the entire kimono shape in just four minutes. She tried on the new one, but the split came in too high, in the middle of the tucked part, so it looked weird. One more draft corrected that, and she took a few steps around in the new one. With a smile, she gave a thumbs up. Then, she suddenly dashed across the street, spun on her heel, and returned. With the lower, split section of the kimono trailing along behind, fluttering from her high speed movement, I held my hand over my mouth, because I noticed something entirely different. As she stood at the edge of the carpet smiling, I slowly opened my mouth.

"I could see your panties." A look of shock replaced her triumph, and she plopped back down on the carpet. The kimono split about midway between the naval and the groin, so when it blew back, of course that would happen. The easiest fix would be to just lower the split below our panties. However, anything below the waist and it would severely hamper our movements again.

"Mmmmm... What to do..." Keiko grumbled. She had realized the same problem.

"Do I get a vote?"

"No!" she glared at me, already knowing that I would say we should try something else. She really wanted to go through with this, and there was no way I could stop her.

Just giving in, I slid up next to her and said, "What about layers? Didn't we always wear something underneath our kimonos?" There was always this other thing we put on first.

"That's right, the nagajupan!"(1) Keiko exclaimed.

"Naga... ju... pan..." I repeated the word slowly. Yeah, that was the word for it, I nodded to myself. Meanwhile, Keiko had started sketching something out again.

"If it's just like this... it will work!" She grinned and showed me her rapid sketch. It seemed to show a piece of clothing similar to a kimono, but shorter. Keiko explained that it was made the same way, but to keep the length to 60 centimeters (2ft) so that it would only go low enough to cover our underwear. Then, she explained that if I put folds in the sides and back, it would be able to stretch to allow us to move the way we wanted.

After she finished her explanation, I tried making it as she said a number of times. The kimono shape was easy by this point, having made so many. The tough part, which I kept having to redo were the strange vertical folds. They came to a point at the top, but spread out all along the hem. After a couple tries, Keiko took a piece of cloth and folded it up, explaining how when it was all folded up, it wouldn't up as much room, but when you stretched it out- pulling it taught for emphasis- the fabric would stretch out again. That meant that if it was normally folded, it would allow the clothing to stretch when needed.

The visual went a long way in helping me understand what she was getting at. After a few more tries, I managed to get the folds about right. Oh, so that's how it works, I thought, taking the finished folded piece and stretching it a few times, watching the folds stretch out as I pulled. If it was like that, it would work. With one more, I had it.

Keiko donned the new garment, tying it off the same way as the first. Then, she bounced up to her feet with a proud look. Glancing down, I could still see between her legs somewhat, since it was _just_ long enough, and I was below her. But, I shrugged it off. We were shorter than everyone else, so no one would see unless they were looking right up from underneath us. Of course, in that case they would be able to see underneath _anything_ we wore, save for long dresses. Concluding that the length was ok, I gave her a thumbs up.

Now that she knew that, she started moving, testing how mobile she could be in it. She started by just walking around a bit, then running. No issues there. As she tested things out, my eyes traveled to the other people around us again. This was still a pretty high level floor, as well as one of the nicest looking ones to date. As such, the population was pretty high. It was getting near 5:00 and people were beginning to trickle back into the town. When the clock tower range at 6:00 to signal the coming of night, a most everyone in the fields would head back. A lot of them would congregate in «Cetiose», the hub town on the tenth floor, because all the merchants were up there to sell their wares to the frontliners. Even so, this town would become increasingly crowded as time went on.

Besides Keiko who was trying on the various products, we were still largely unclothed, so we would surely attract attention, and not the good kind. That would be embarrassing, so I wanted to avoid it somehow. Taking one of the numerous kimonos I'd made for practice, I pulled it over to equip and the fabric appeared around me. It wasn't tied or anything, so it only covered my back, but at least it made me feel covered.

Meanwhile, the few people who were around already watched Keiko with great interest as she hopped a few times, seeing how the nagajuban stretched with her movements. Then, she slid into a wide battle stance. No problems. A few rolls too, and a cartwheel, and everything was still looking fine. Then, she threw a few slanting kicks. Low, middle, then high. I noticed a slight light effect, probably that «Martial Arts» skill picking up on her movements.

She turned, bouncing a few times, then kicking straight upward, until her leg stopped abruptly in middair. She held there for a moment, with her legs coming fairly close to forming a 180 degree angle. In the moment she stayed in that position, all the guys watching let out a huge shout and fell over backward. I could only slap my forehead while my sister's leg snapped back to the ground and she mumbled, "Guess that's the limit."

She hopped over to where I was still sitting and said that the flexibility was good. We couldn't do a split in them, but we probably wouldn't have to, so it should be fine. Now that we had settled that, she donned the kimono as well. With them both on, the effect was amazing, even just these blank ones for testing. The kimono flowed all around her, while the nagajuban provided a more stable second layer underneath.

"Ok, now that we have the basic shape down, we need the make the design pieces," I said. Before we could make the actual kimono, we would need the designs already prepared to put on. So, we went over the picture and chose which parts of the design would become each piece. With such decoration, even that took a while. When we finished, I sat back and let out a long breath. Looking up, I could see the sun falling toward the evening sky. Night was coming. The kimono designs came to a total of sixty-four pieces. That meant one hundred twenty-eight for both. Since it was less than half of the diamond slivers we collected, we would be able to use two for each piece.

The next question we faced was, what else should we mix with the diamonds which would become the armor? We had a lot of materials, but not enough to use the same things for every single piece. Because of that, we designated specific pieces, which would get one material or another, such as the front designs near the hem, which got «Carbon», a durability boosting ingredient, and the ones under the sleeves, which got «Quicksilver», a speed boosting ingredient. Splitting up our materials like that, we decided on how everything would be made, just in time for the clock tower to begin ringing.

After the loud tolls ceased, we set back to work. We just had to fire up the furnace, and we were ready. Two «diamond slivers» went in, with their chosen extra ingredient, coming back out a little stronger. From there, I took a piece of high grade silk and carefully shaped it into the correct design, cutting and applying the dye to color each section of the design exactly as Keiko described. Once it looked just right, I took the improved diamond slivers and pressed them against the cloth. They sank into the cloth and it changed, keeping its shape and color, but becoming more shiny, with a deep luster like metal.

Like that, we went through each and every piece, making an identical pair of every one. A lot of the pieces were small and simple, but some of them were more intricate, more colorful, or simply larger than the others, and took longer. In particular, the large, delicately colored patterning across the chest and shoulders were much harder, and I actually didn't finish within the ten minute time limit on my first try. So, that piece was trashed and I had to redo it all over again, barely finishing within the time available for each one I made. There were only a couple of those, and I thankfully managed to get through them, crafting them perfectly in line with Keiko's imagined look for them.

As we worked diligently, the sun fell below this floor, the sky turned dark, and all the lamps along the street flared to life. The music which continuously floated through the air inside towns with no discernible source changed from afternoon music, to evening music, to nighttime music, all while we prepared the designs.

When we finally finished the last design and sat back, we let out quiet laughs. One more part of this crazy down. Looking up again, I realized for the first time that quite a crowd had gathered to watch. When they realized that we'd noticed them, a number of the onlookers fled, but a few stayed, their expressions ranging between open interest and embarrassed, stubborn refusal to move just because we were looking at them. I couldn't help the smirk that grew across my face. I put a hand to my mouth and started giggling at their funny faces, as did Keiko. Shaking that off after a minute, I pulled up my menu to check the time again. By far, the most time consuming portion of this whole process, it had taken nearly four hours. It was almost 10:00 at night already.

"Whoo," I let out a breath when I realized just how long I'd been totally focused on my task. No wonder why I had a tight, kind of painful feeling in my head. "So, what next?" I asked.

"Well, first we have to eat."

"Very true, I'm getting really hungry," I nodded. We hadn't eaten anything all day, so we really needed to eat something if we were going to keep going.

"We need to get more dyes too," she said as we got up. "And another carpet, we don't have enough room to work." I nodded along. Another «Vendor's Carpet» would be expensive, but we were pretty rich, so it wouldn't be much of an issue. And she was right, at the moment, all of the designs were piled up along the back of the carpet. If we were going to put them on quickly, we'd have to have more room to lay them out so we could actually find the one we were looking for.

Because there were quite a few more people around now and we actually had valuables out, as we stepped off the carpet, I tapped the corner and selected the 『Lock』 option. While normally nothing could be moved while it sat on the carpet, except by the owner, there were rumors that some people had come up with ways to steal things while no one was watching. Of course, they were rumors because 'supposedly' no one had ever seen these things being stolen. Of course that begged to be questioned with 'then where did the rumors come from', but that was hardly the point. Nonetheless, the option to lock the carpet was like an extra layer of security. It made everything on top become completely unmovable, even by the owner themselves, until it was unlocked again.

Walking a short ways, we entered a bar and ate a quick meal, hardly even paying attention to the food, even if it was the first thing we'd eaten today. From there, we shot over to the crafting shop. As we went, I realized that even in our unfinished, untied, badly formed, off white clothes, which probably looked like failed attempts at making robes, we still attracted quite a bit of attention. Once in the store, we bought a whole bunch more dyes, as well as bought another carpet, but before we left the shop, Keiko decided we should get a table as well. I didn't know what she had in mind, but I went along with it anyway. It all added up near one hundred fifty thousand Col, but that wasn't much compared to all the money we had by now.

When we arrived back at our carpet, I was surprised to see a couple guys still hanging around, even after we had left for almost twenty minutes. I looked over at the one in front, a little older than me, probably about eighteen, with black hair and leather armor He had a bit of a beard as well, notable mostly because hair was one of the few things you could customize, facial hair included. As such, most people, excluding the old men, chose to remove their beards. I raised an eyebrow and gave him a questioning expression. Seeing me looking at him, he suddenly stammered out, "W,what are you making?"

There was no harm telling him, so I answered, "Kimonos."

He blinked a few times before responding, "Kimonos."

"Yes, kimonos," I said when he answered by repeating me.

"But..." he hesitated for a second, "Aren't you in «The Army»? Why would you make Kimonos?"

"Standard army gear disintegrates too easily."

"Disintegrates?" Now he gave me a questioning look.

"..." I hadn't thought before I said that. "A,actually, it's a long story." I replied while shaking both my head and hands

"Is that so..." he scratched his head and sighed. From there, I returned to work. We spread out the second carpet directly next to the first so that there was no gap in between. Then, we pushed the anvil and furnace all the way into one corner, and set the table at the front, facing the street. All the design pieces were spread out across both carpets, stacked in their designated pairs. With that, we were ready to start.

"Actually, we should make the nagajuban first," Keiko said out of nowhere. I couldn't see a reason not to, so I nodded. Taking a sheet of silk, I threaded it to the fire lizard scale, and beast hide we had collected earlier, so it would be durable enough to survive in battle. I brought the scissors up to cut the end of the thread, so they would all fuse together, but Keiko suddenly gasped "Wait!" and my hand froze. She swiped our menu open and dug through our inventory for a bit before pulling out one more thing. Except, it wasn't really a crafting material, was it?

She held out one of the «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I's» "Use this too," she said firmly. Usually I'd just say ok, but this time I was so confused, I asked why. "I was just thinking, crystals protected our swords from that last one's miasma, so maybe this will protect our clothes from something like that if it happens again." I couldn't argue with that. While the chances of us encountering another enemy that used the same sort of attack to corrode equipment was not very likely, we still had a really long way to go. Whether it was partially from her luck or not, (though I was inclined to believe the former) Keiko had solid enough intuition. I wouldn't ignore something like this when I had no reason not to.

Taking the shard, I lightly pressed the needle against the little, transparent shard. I heard a whisper from the guys watching, "what is that?" he breathed. Strangely enough, for all the time we'd had them, even I wouldn't be able to answer that question. After a second of carefully trying to pierce the shard without breaking it, the needle slipped through the surface. I pulled it through the other side, successfully attaching it to the others. Snipping the thread, the four materials all glowed briefly before disappearing, to leave a simple piece of cloth.

Holding the cloth in my hand, my eyebrow lifted slightly. I could feel the vaguely warm, energetic sensation from the cloth against my fingers. The magic in that shard had moved into the cloth. Hopefully that would be useful somehow. Holding the cloth in my hands, I took a deep breath.

"Ah, I almost forgot!" Keiko gasped, completely derailing my thoughts as I began to focus on how I would make this next piece. She took the tape measure and stretched it across the table. Calling one of the guys watching, she said 'make yourself useful' and had him hold the other end of the tape measure. From there, she marked the table in a number of places, creating a grid of dots all across the surface. Finally, she drew her dagger and dug it into the surface of the table, carefully creating shallow gauges across the entire surface. Every few times, she would press harder to create a deeper gauge. "There, how do you like it?" she asked.

At first I wasn't sure what it was, but then I understood and my mouth fell open slightly. "That's a great idea. Now we don't have to keep comparing to the tape measure." What she'd done was create a measurement grid across the table, marking every couple centimeters, with a deeper cut every five lines.

"I marked every two centimeters(0.74in), with a bigger mark every ten,"(4in) she smiled.

"Ok, time to make the nagajuban," I grinned. If it was like this, I wouldn't have to keep refering to the tape measure, I'd be able to make the measurements at a glance. It would save a lot of time, maybe even half. I laid the fabric down, and tapped it, selecting that I wanted to make a dress type of clothing. From there, I had ten minutes. Of course, with all that practice, and this new table to measure against, I came nowhere near that mark. Stretching and cutting and dying the piece quickly and with easy motions, I was done in five minutes. As I went to press the 『Finish』 button, my finger swung down to a different button, the 『Name』 option. Everything else I'd made was just given a basic name based on whatever type of equipment it was. No matter what they actually looked like, they were given basic names like 'glove', 'shirt', and so on. Given that this was not at all a dress, it shouldn't have a name like that. So, I typed into the virtual keyboard 『Nagajuban』. Once I'd done that, I ended the creation.

The finished product wasn't like white like normal. It would be more visible than usual, not only showing at the collar, but also below the split in our our kimonos. So, Keiko wanted it colored silver. Apart from that, it was pretty much normal. No fancy decoration on this one, that was all saved for the main garment.

Following that, I made a second, careful to make everything exactly the same. With those done, it was time to craft our actual kimonos. Even with all the practice I'd had, I was anxious. If I messed up, it would take an hour to get more materials, plus another two to recreate all the patterns. So, I just had to get it all right. Letting out a slow breath, I steeled myself.

"Ready." I said slowly to keep my voice steady. I picked up another piece of the fine spider silk and threaded it with the fire lizard scale, beast hide, and a magical shard. I snipped the thread to fuse the materials and set the new piece of silk down on the table. Opening up the menu, I selected the same type, a dress again, and took another slow breath before hitting ok.

As soon as the menu disappeared, I immediately began shaping the fabric, stretching it to exactly the right dimensions now that I was able to determine them at a glance. Cutting here and there to create the seams, while Keiko explained where and how she wanted it dyed. Before I had even finished the entire shape, while I was working on shaping the wide sleeves, Keiko began grabbing the patterning pieces from their places across the carpets. She pressed them into the fabric here and there, placing them according to the image in her mind, while I snipped bits and got the sleeve to just the right dimensions.

Once the sleeves were done, I moved down to the lower section and added the smaller, slanted panels which would make the front of the kimono. I stretched them up following the exact arc I'd done for all the previous ones, until they came to just the right place so that once we were wearing it, the split would begin in just the right place. The collar didn't take long, and I made sure to apply the dye as Keiko described, even while working on placing designs across the lower section.

Once the main shape was complete, I began grabbing up designs as Keiko pointed them out. I tried getting an image of what she was going for from her, but even so, it was difficult to place them in exactly the right places. Our frantic work went on as every one of the sixty-four patterns were placed meticulously. Once that was finished, we hardly had any time left. Keiko gave the whole thing a careful, searching look, shifting a two different designs so slightly it wasn't even noticeable, and giving me the ok. I brought up the menu and named it 『Kimono』. With just a few seconds left, I let out a relieved sigh. Without warning, Keiko grabbed the window from in front of me and with her fingers flailing all across the virtual keyboard, changed the name in the last second before the crafting ended.

Thoroughly confused, I raised an eyebrow. Why did she change the name anyway? And to what? Pulling up the new clothing's information, I read the new name. 『Twilight Kimono』.

"Oh," I said quietly. That was understandable. The color scheme was like twilight after all. Starting with a deep blueish purple at the tops of the shoulders, the color slowly faded to more pale shades and grew lighter, with blues, pinks, and just a hint of some yellow down near the hem. As for the decoration, it again, was different than most kimonos. Instead of a bright floral pattern, there were many intricate swirls of silver and yellow, mixed with black and white rings and slashes of other colors, such as red and white.

I glanced down at the information window again. Each delicate design set itself apart from the dark kimono with its deep metallic luster. With so many pieces, as small as they were, the defensive stats were actually very high, much higher than even the medium armor we'd been given by The Army. Looking away from the garment stretched across the table, we both grinned at each other.

After we finished admiring the amazing piece of equipment we had actually created with our own hands, we went on to the next one. If anything, it was even more stressful, since this one had to come out perfectly identical to the other in order for us to receive our passive bonus. Working to the absolute best of our skill, we frantically put together the second kimono, rapidly placing designs and dyeing, cutting, until it was finished. With only a handful of seconds remaining again, we named it 『Twilight Kimono』 as well. Time expired, and we both fell over backward, absolutely exhausted from the pressure.

The thing that made us look up again, was the sudden outburst of applause. Leaning up from the ground, we found that the few people still watching, even as the time was approaching midnight, were giving us a round of standing applause. Honestly, in working on that, I'd completely forgotten there were people watching us.

"Can you put them on? I bet they're amazing." The same guy from before asked excitedly. I had to smile at the question. As excited as they were, the thought of putting on that masterpiece we'd made... I got shivers just thinking about it. Carefully picking them up, we stored them in our inventory, along with the nagajupan. Bringing them up in the equipment menu, I glanced up at the men. When I put it on, before it was tied up, I'd be wearing nothing but my underwear. Oh who cares, they've been standing here for like six hours watching us make these, I said to myself. Then, I put on the under-kimono. Realizing that I hadn't made any more himo, I quickly whipped up four nicer quality ones with silk. Compared to what we'd just done, it felt like I could make them with my eyes closed.

Since Mom had always helped me getting into a kimono, on the handful of occasions it was required, I needed Keiko to help me straighten out my clothing and tie it off. Then, I put on the kimono and she helped me tie that as well. Keiko did hers herself, and we stood there in our absolutely amazing new clothes while the few people who had stuck around for this long into the night stood in wonder. After a full minute of standing there, just like that, one guy suddenly spoke up.

"What about the obi?"(3)

"Eh?" Jaws dropping open, we realized that we'd completely forgotten about that part. Of course, no kimono would be complete without the obi, so Keiko started sketching out how it would look while explaining what other accessories we would need. Given the more simplistic cloth physics in this world, a lot of the minor accessories which did little more than keep the obi from wrinkling wouldn't be necessary. So, she explained that I would have to create a few different accessories for everything to look right.

"Well, I guess we can skip the obimakura and obi-ita(4), but we should make the obiage(5) and obijime(6) because they're decorative. Never having paid attention to things like that before, I had her explain what they were before moving on to making them. Keiko decided that the obijime should be white, and I started with that, because it was just a string and should go quickly. Of course, that's when she explained that it was kind of like a rope because it had multiple strands wrapped around each other. Splitting the cloth I was using into a few different pieces, I stretched them all up while spinning them around each other in a spiral once I'd reached the correct length, I held it up for her to check and she ok'd it. After making a second, I asked how the other accessory would look and she explained. Listening closely, I followed her instructions to create the a pair of obiages as well.

With them done, I sat down by Keiko again, who had quickly refined her drawing to show all of the details in the patterns which stretched all across the surface of it. Watching her as she quickly finished up the little bit she had to go, my eyes traced the lines and I realized what it was. The flowing lines which traced along the entire surface looked just like an aurora. There were also small dots scattered throughout, which must be stars. It was a sky motif. Once she finished the drawing, she held it up and I nodded immediately.

Since the design pretty much covered the entire surface of the obi, we decided to split it into thirty-five segments. We decided on thirty-five because we had seventy «Diamond Slivers» left. As long as I didn't mess up, we would have just enough to double them again, like we had before.

From there, we created all the necessary designs, just as Keiko envisioned them. It was rough, since it was getting extremely late(I could even say early), but I managed to get through it. Following that came the obi itself. We used the same mix of materials as the kimono itself to start, before setting the equipment type to 'sash' and beginning the crafting process.

The obi itself was actually very simple, just a big, long rectangle. For whatever reason, Keiko said that it had to be exactly three hundred sixty centimeters(11.8ft) long and thirty centimeters(1ft) wide. Getting the width was simple enough, but we had to stretch it across the table a number of times to reach the required length. With that taking hardly one minute, we spent the rest of the time frantically applying the patterns from one end to the other, positioning them with the utmost care that all of the edges lined up perfectly with the ones before and after, so their were no breaks in the overall image. Changing the name to 'Aurora Obi' before we finished it, the few men who had stayed around even after we finished the kimonos let out a collective 'oooh.'

The second was just as stressful, but we got through it again. By this point, I was surprised the sun wasn't starting to rise. Well, not really, it was only 3:00 am. Heh, _only_. But still, it was incredibly late to keep staying up like this.

With the two identical obis lying finished in front of us, we slowly reached out and dropped them into our inventory, equipping them a moment later. Since they were just long stretches of fabric, they fell to the ground around us as soon as they appeared. We quickly picked them up and I looked at Keiko to explain how we kept them on.

"Well... We're supposed to tie them in some sort of knot to keep them on... But I never really figured that part out. Mom always helped me with it..." She scratched her head while explaining that she had no idea how to do this.

"Ah! I can help!" one of the men suddenly shouted. It was the same light armored guy from before, with the facial hair. "My grandma lived with us and she was really old, so she always wore a kimono, like all the time. She was always talking about how to do stuff with it. Let's see if I can remember..." he explained himself while hesitatingly stepping onto the carpet where we were standing.

"You see, first you take this part and wrap it around like this..." he explained what he was doing as he wrapped the obi around me a couple times, then went into and explanation of how to make the knot that held it in the back. "Ehhhh, the taiko knot is common, but doesn't really fit this. The bara knot is too hard to do, and the koma is too plain...(7) How about... the choukou?(8)"

Keiko who at least had the slightest of ideas what this guy was going on about, answered, "Yeah, that one is nice."

"Well, it's usually only for a yukata,(9) but I doubt anyone will call you out on something like that," he laughed while beginning to twist and pull on the obi behind me. A few times, he pulled hard and the whole thing tightened around me like a clamp, forcing the air our of my lungs. He slid it upward and tightened it one more time before finishing the knot in the back. I could feel it squeezing all along my ribs. It was so wide that it started just below my breasts and ended right near my naval. This would take some getting used to.

Since the knot was behind me, I couldn't see it. Instead, I watched as he tied Keiko's obi the same way. When he pulled hers to get the height just right, I noticed that it pushed her breasts up quite a bit. Of course, we were much better endowed than a normal Japanese woman, so it was only natural... I guess. Like so many other things today, I shrugged it off with the hope that everyone would be too busy looking at our outfits to notice. When the man finished tying the knot in the back, I stepped behind Keiko to get a good look at it. Surprisingly, it was just a giant bow knot. Well, not quite. Instead of having the ends hanging out as the bottom two pieces of the bow, I didn't see the ends anywhere.

"Since cloth physics are more simple in SAO than the real world, those knots probably shouldn't come out on their own," he explained. The obiage and obijime went on in their respective places, further dressing up our already incredible outfits, and we were finally finished.

After we stood for nearly ten minutes, and did a few spins for the guys who had now been standing to watch for nearly twelve hours, we thanked the man who had helped us with our obis. "No, thank you," he replied with a slight bow. Then, everyone dispersed.

After they all left, we checked over the stats of our new equipment for a minute. Between the armored designs on both the kimono and obi, our defensive stats were far higher than we'd ever seen them before. Well, that was understandable since we'd hardly ever wore armor, but that didn't change the fact that it would be a great help from here forward. After rearranging the furniture on the carpets so the table sat on one(with a cloth sack full of dyes), the furnace and anvil on the other, we set them to storage mode, so they rolled up with all the heavy crafting items, allowing us to transport them.

Walking off with the long metallic tubes they had turned into, we both plodded along slowly, with a calm silence all around, broken only by the most faint trickle of instruments. At this hour of the morning, even the ambient town music nearly disappeared.

As we walked, I realized something. Despite their size, the placement of the obi was such that it didn't actually make it that much harder to move. After I continued to wear it for a while, I should have no trouble at all. That was a nice thought.

With our wonderful new clothes floating around us, making elegant movements in the air, we walked off to bed for the night.

_Author Note: Yes! It's finished! _

_ The reason for the huge delay was that, in order for them to create kimonos, I needed to actually know about kimonos! That lead to two full days of research into them(no really, look up 'kimono' and 'obi' on wikipedia and you'll be amazed), followed by another couple days to write up this huge chapter. Also, sorry about the mass of notes.(9, really?) It was necessary to explain what all these strange things are._

_ But whatever the case, it's finished, and I hope you enjoyed reading it._

_ Time for them to really dive in. :D_

(1)Basically a kimono-like robe worn underneath.

(2)A thin ribbon used to tie the kimono closed.

(3)The big sash which goes around the kimono. They're about as fancy as the kimono itself.

(4)Various accessories related to keeping the the obi looking neat.

(5)Scarf-like piece of fabric goes under the obi. Shows a bit in the front. Usually colorful.

(6)A decorative string tied over top, which sits in the middle of the obi.

(7)He's listing various types of knots used to tie an obi.

(8)'Butterfly' knot. It's basically looks like a big bow (Though it's tied differently).

(9)Less formal, less expensive, lighter, than a kimono. Worn about the same way.


	128. Cheatsheet 7

—

«»

『』

#######

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

#######

exp 1557079

col 1620100

#######

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 3

STR 34

AGI 50

HP 5280

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 3

STR 34

AGI 50

HP 5280

#######

One-handed Sword 239

Sp: 574400

Sprint 218

Sp: 479000

Battle Healing 220

Sp: 489500

Dagger 239

Sp: 577350

Metal Working 193

Sp: 375500

Metal Refining 209

Sp: 440000

Tailoring 159

Sp: 254720

Cloth Refining 43

Sp: 18500

Martial Arts 2

Sp: 59

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

#######

# E Note

Nagajuban 2 2 Goes under kimono – silver

Twilight Kimono 2 2 Purple at top, fades to pink at bottom – high defensive stats

Aurora Obi 2 2 Blue with aurora and star patterns – high defensive stats

Hashi(Ties) 4 4 Keep the kimono in on and in place – white

Obiage 2 2 Scarf-like decoration for obi – silver

Obijime 2 2 String decoration for obi – white

Veiled Wayfinder 1 1 10S 10D – mainly black

Blade of Ferin 1 1 Veiled Wayfinder with Ferin in crystal slot

Harmonious Convoy 2 2 10S 5D – mainly white/gray

Woodland Arrow 86 0 Arrows fired by 7th floor boss

A few Ores xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

blessed twins shard of power I 9

30% full

#######

Level chart

11 44000 220000-264000

12 48000 264000-312000

13 52000 312000-364000

14 56000 364000-420000

15 60000 420000-480000

16 64000 480000-544000

17 68000 544000-612000

18 72000 612000-684000

19 76000 684000-760000

20 80000 760000-840000

21 84000 840000-924000

22 88000 924000-1012000

23 92000 1012000-1104000

24 96000 1104000-1200000

25 100000 1200000-1300000

26 104000 1300000-1404000

27 108000 1404000-1512000

28 112000 1512000-1624000

29= 116000 1624000-1740000

30 120000 1740000-1860000

#######

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

#######

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

#######

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

#######

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four... ? 』

-3-

?

-4-

?


	129. Chapter 121

**Already?**** Chapter 121**

_Author Note: A number of people have requested a picture of their kimonos, but as you've seen, I'm not a good enough artist to do it myself. I would be eternally grateful to any reader who could make a picture. orz_

Since we'd gone to bed sometime after 3:00 am, the only thing that woke us up in the morning was the blaring alarm I'd set. Since we'd totally ditched on our duties yesterday... Actually, the last time we'd shown up like regular, before getting involved with Ferin, didn't we suddenly jump out the window and run away? Yeah...

Slowly rolling out from under the covers, I staggered to my feet. It was 6:30 am, so I'd hardly gotten more than three hours of sleep.

"Sho... trirerd..." I slurred out the few words that came to mind. Even in this state, I knew we absolutely had to get back to the guild to start making up for all the time we'd missed recently. We'd just have to wait a bit before looking for the next orb. We put on our new clothes, which we'd stayed up so terribly late to finish before heading out of our room. At least they were still all tied up correctly. There's no way we could have put them on ourselves like this.

We made our way down the street, leaning on each other and dragging our feet, until we arrived at the two entangled trees which formed the «Teleport Gate» on the eighth floor. After warping down to the first floor, we tried to pick up our pace a bit so we wouldn't take forever to get to the «Black Iron Castle», since we were finally starting to wake up a bit. Still, it took us what felt like forever to get there. Since we were later arriving than usual, the whole place was in the usual morning uproar. Thankfully, as we picked our way through the crowd, there always seemed to be a small clearing for us to move through next, making it much easier to make it to the stairs, and the third floor where Thinker's office was.

As we walked down the hall, approaching the door to his office, we both released long yawns. "Come on, wake up! Wake up!" I said with as much effort I could put into it, hopping a few times and shaking myself to try and break my sleepy stupor. As Keiko did the same, I suddenly realized something. Stopping, I twisted around to look behind me and blinked repeatedly. For some reason, the hallway behind us was much more crowded than usual. A number of people stood a number of meters back, at the last intersecting hallway. Everyone seemed to be looking at each other, or the walls, or the ceiling, or even the floor. Most of them were whistling too. When I got a questioning feeling from Keiko, I pointed backward and she looked over my shoulder for a few seconds before turning around so we could keep walking.

"Weird..." we both mumbled at the same time. But whatever, who said they couldn't stare at the ceiling and whistle? Stopping at Thinker's door, I reached out and knocked tapped my knuckles against the door twice.

"Come in." When Thinker's voice came through the door, we both moved forward, pushing the double doors open and stepping inside. The look on Thinker's face when we walked in was one I had never seen before. I almost couldn't tell what it was. Surprise?

"What's wrong?" Keiko asked as I realized that.

After opening and closing his mouth without saying anything for a few seconds, he just said, "Those clothes..."

"Our clothes?" I asked. I didn't really understand what he was trying to say, so I explained, "We made them yesterday.

"Is that so..."

"Yeah, pretty cool huh?" While part of me was smiling and answering, another part was slowly beginning to realize that this wasn't what we came here for.

"Well, leaving our clothes aside..." Keiko started, ahead of me in realizing that we were here for something. However, she didn't quite grasp what it was we _were_ here for.

"Orders! That's what we came for!" my sleepy brain finally remembered.

"A,ah! That's right!" Thinker suddenly snapped back to attention. "Today is important, the Boss Raid is today."

"Eh?" we let out a questioning sound together.

"The Boss Raid is today."

"What was that?" I questioned, sure I'd heard him wrong.

"The Boss Raid. It's today."

"Come again?" Keiko raised an eyebrow.

"The. Boss. Raid. Takes. Place. Today." Thinker spoke in single word sentences.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"EEEHHHHH?!" Suddenly finding ourselves fully awake, we both started questioning at the same time. However, when our questions started overlapping, nothing came out quite the way it was intended...

"You mean-"

"What about-"

"They made it-"

"Through the dungeon-"

"That puzzle-"

And together, "And made it that no one to the boss could solve?" Thinker just stared at us for a few seconds, half smiling.

"You realize that not one part of that actually made sense, right?" he said with a chuckle. "Well, after figuring out the door puzzle, the frontliners found that the dungeon itself was only five levels, and cleared it very quickly. The scouting battles took place the day you were sleeping, and yesterday. Today, the Raid will begin at noon. I suggest you get a little more sleep before then," he finished with a grin.

After he finished his explanation, one thing stuck in my mind. Scouting battle yesterday. "So that's why we didn't accidentally mob-kill anyone in the dungeon yesterday..." I mumbled to myself.

"What was that?" Thinker asked.

"Nothing!" we both exclaimed when we realized what I'd just said. "Th,then we'll be going now." We started to turn away when he raised his hand for us to wait.

When we turned back, he opened his mouth to say something, but stopped. "It's nothing, just be careful where you walk, dressed like that." With a wave, he excused us and we headed off. As he'd advised, we would get some more rest before the Boss Raid. Heading up to the tenth floor, we left the main town «Cetiose» and headed off to the frontline town, the closest one to the tower at the South end of this floor. We hadn't gone by there yesterday when we went to farm the dungeon, but according to the map, it was called «Sythum».

When we arrived, we still had a few hours before the meeting, so we rented a room at the first inn we saw and lay down to get some more rest before noon.


	130. Chapter 122

**Just Another Boss Raid...?**** Chapter 122**

After our nap, we woke up feeling much better, ready to take on whatever sort of Boss was thrown at us this time. After getting dressed, came breakfast. The moment that dawned on us, the gnawing hunger we'd both been suppressing this whole time came back with vengeance. I couldn't even remember the last time we'd eaten. We headed out of the inn and into the first place we saw. I don't even remember what we ordered, but it tasted amazing. Probably just because we were so hungry.

Once we could think about something besides filling our bellies, we ran over to the plaza. Unsurprisingly, (for us) we hadn't left time to eat after getting up, so we were late. Not very late, but still not quite there by noon.

And everyone else was gone. "Oh come on, we're only three minutes late!" I shouted at the empty plaza. Well, maybe not as empty as I thought, because the rather large crowd that wasn't part of the raid group all looked at me at the same time. For a few seconds, I could feel many, many stares boring into me. With my cheeks brightening a little, embarrassed how I had just shouted that in the middle of an apparently crowded town, I raised my right hand. Giving a little wave, I squeaked, "Hi... Bye," grabbed Keiko's hand, and fled.

After the twenty seconds it took to run clear out of «Sythum», we started toward the tower. That's where the raid group would be going, and we couldn't be too far behind. We swung around toward the main roadway which lead to the dungeon, since most of the floor was swampy marshlands which severely reduced movement speed, leaving the wide stone paths the only way to travel efficiently across the floor. Of course, it also meant that the roads were lined with ambush points by the various types of swamp mobs. While nothing like the huge enemies we had recently fought our way through, they were still tough to finish off, and they slowed down our progress considerably. It's not like we could just run past them and create a train all the way to the raid party, I'm sure they wouldn't be happy if we did something so stupid. With that in mind, we stopped to fight off each bunch of huge beetles, snakes, and spiders that leaped out at us before moving on.

Even so, we ran fast and caught up to the main group less than halfway to the dungeon entrance. When everyone heard us approaching and turned around with weapons raised, we just waved and shouted (because we were still quite a good distance away) to them. "Hey, sorry we're late!" While moving closer to the main group, I heard a quite a few people saying 'who are they?' They weren't even whispering.

We walked right up to the main group shortly before the spiky haired Kibaou moved clear of the crowd and greeted us with a, "Who the hell are you?"

Taken aback by his always biting speech, it took a second for me to reply, "We're part of the clearing group."

"Hey, I know them!" female voice shouted. Following the sounds of shoving and a few curses, I spotted Asuna's red cloak hood in the crowd, forcing her way- with a great deal more trouble than Kibaou had had- through the mass of bodies. Finally, she broke through the last of the people, walking right past the angry man in front of us and ushering us into the group, while speaking loudly for everyone to hear. "Ok. Just a minute and I'll get you into a party." I got the feeling that she was speaking more to them than us.

As soon as she said that, everyone dropped the suspicious and angry looks, shifting varying degrees of curiosity and lust. Yeah, those were looks I was more accustomed to... unfortunately... Asuna grabbed my attention again when she started speaking to us in a hushed voice, an arm around both of our necks to bring us close as we walked around the left side of the group. "What's with those outfits? Can you even fight dressed like that?" Her voice sounded strained and kind of angry.

"Yeah, no problem," we both replied immediately. We'd fought in them all the way here without the slightest bit of trouble.

"If you say so..." While the whole group resumed its march toward the dungeon, Asuna quickly fit us into one of the smaller parties. From there on out, it was an easy walk. Even if there were monsters waiting in ambush, they wouldn't attack with so many people walking together. So I just relaxed as we slowly went on.

A little ways into the walk, I swiped open my menu and retrieved the small orb we had collected a few days ago. I held the small object up, turning it around slowly while I examined its surface. It was a sphere, but had many small faces making up the overall curve. And it was red, not quite a pure crayon red, but a just a little darker. Through my fingertips, I could feel the slightest bit of magic in it. Maybe that was why it was opaque, unlike the many transparent magic crystals? While I had no way to answer that question, I suddenly became aware that more eyes were on me than before.

I opened my menu and stashed the orb back in my inventory. After everything we'd gone through, I didn't want it getting stolen somehow. Rumor had it that if someone got their «Sneak» skill high enough, they could pickpocket others. I believed the rumor, not because I had some sort of evidence, but because a major rule of thumb in this world was: 'All rumors are true.' I couldn't be sure how, but pretty much everything that had once been a rumor turned out to be true at one point or another. So surely this would eventually be confirmed as well. But as long as it was inside my inventory, it would be completely untouchable.

As for the feeling that more people were watching me now... I glanced around taking note of the eyes on the two of us. Well... that was most of them... With a sigh, I totally gave up on that train of thought.

After a little while, we came to the dungeon entrance. Thinking about it now, I'd heard people calling this place «Thousand Snake Castle». It didn't sound like something they had made up, so it was probably a system recognized name. None before this were named though... Were the floor dungeons going to have names from now on, or was this one unique? While I wondered these idle thoughts, we proceeded with nearly no opposition up through the mere five floor dungeon to reach the Boss Room.

As usual, Kibaou kicked it off by saying something angry, tactless, and generally without meaning to get everyone fired up. With that, they charged into the Boss Room. Apparently «The Force» had grown enough now that not quite all of them could enter before they exceeded the forty-nine person raid limit. Of course, that meant that _everyone_ outside of their ranks had to wait outside as well. It was really disappointing after everything we'd all gone though, to not get a chance to actually fight against the Boss yourself. Well, that's how I felt anyway.

Inside, a huge snake was coiling all over the place. It was a dark color, kind of a grayish-green. Only, at the very end of its body where the head should be, it morphed into a human torso wielding an enormous heavy long spear. It had basically become a rule that humanoid mean stronger, so it was no surprise that nearly every Boss up to this point had been humanoid. And as we continued, I seriously doubted that the trend would change. This world was build around Sword Skills after all.

The snake was winding all over the place while everyone inside swarmed around in various directions, following whatever sort of battle plan they had concocted from the scouting fights. Meanwhile, the rest of us just stood out in the hallway, watching. It went on for a little while like that, and at some point the Boss lunged in a way that surprised everyone, landing a hit with its huge spear squarely against one of the light armored damage dealers. His health was already low from the various wide area attacks the Boss had used, and it his shattered like glass. I can't say it was surprising, we usually lost one or two people at each raid. It wasn't anything we could really stop, if they made a single mistake in the wrong situation, it could lead to death in an instant. Another person slipped into the boss room to take his place, his expression mixed somewhere between hurt and excitement.

Thinking about it now, having all of us out here was good and bad. If everything went as planned, we wouldn't even get to fight and it was a huge waste of manpower. But considering the alternative... If we did get to fight, that would mean that the first group had been crushed, something our deceptively fragile frontline couldn't handle. For the next ninety floors, we would have to make sure that didn't happen; even if it meant standing outside during all the Raids, because it was more important that everyone made it through alive.

The battle stretched on for a little while. The boss, 『The Orochi King』 had very high defense on the long section of its snake body, whereas the human torso which would surely be more susceptible to their attacks was nearly five meters above their heads most of the time. So they all contented themselves with hacking at its heavily armored hide of scales whenever in range. With so many people, and with the lack of powerful attacks to keep them on the defensive, they cut away its health at a steady pace. I couldn't be sure just how long it took, maybe twenty minutes or half an hour, but they finally knocked it down to the final bar of its four.

After a brief time of hesitation, they struck at it with renewed fervor. The reason was simple, after taking out a bar of a Boss' hp, they often changed their attack patterns. Unlike usual, this Boss hadn't changed its attacks at all from the beginning. Since the scouting battles only fought until they had taken out the first bar of hp, things got more dangerous after the second bar was gone. So everyone would hold back for a little after each bar disappeared, to see if its attacks would change. And in this case they didn't, even on its last bar of hp. I guess it really wasn't an offensive type at all. Weird. Most Bosses had a lot of offensive power, but I guess this one was made more for a battle of attrition. Except it didn't have enough power to actually wear down its enemies, and was worn down itself instead. Well, as long as we won, it wouldn't matter soon anyway.

With their new energy, the raid group took out the Boss' hp faster than before. It fell into yellow, then red, in just a minute or two. As soon as it hit the red zone, twenty percent of its last bar- five percent of its total health in this case- it let out a shriek. Oh, so that's how it is, I realized. Some Bosses would have a kind of 'last stand' where their attacks would change again, or they might simply gain stats once their health fell into the red. Like the one on the mountain, which had morphed into that monstrosity when its health hit red. Of course, that was way more extreme than anything any other Boss had done, but it was still an example of what was possible here.

In this case, the snake finished its long shriek and coiled up, launching high into the air like a spring. It landed with a massive crash that sent a number of people off their feet, all the way at the far end of the room. It sat coiled up, instead of spreading out all over the place like it had through the rest of the battle. It held its spear pointed out, toward the raid group, holding in a defensive posture. So, it's last stand would just be it trying to hold out like that? With a huge shout the raid group charged headlong toward the cornered Boss. In that sort of position, it would probably get off one good stab with its spear, and might take out one of the attackers before the reached it and quickly cut it down. So that was the point- just to get one more kill.

The raid group closed, in their weapons ready, many already glowing with light effects as they ran. The boss leaned low, rearing its spear back for a strike. I blinked. There was something in the air, a tingling feeling, like all the hairs on my body standing up at once. Magic? I could feel it flowing past, tons of it, all toward the Boss, like it was charging up. I stared closely at the deformed head, somewhere between human and snake, atop the human torso. It was going to use some kind of special attack. I realized that, and turned away on reflex. In the next moment, that tingling feeling all around vanished.

I looked up again and my jaw fell open. Everyone had turned to stone. It was the «Petrified» status effect, a very rare and dangerous status effect. It was like a stun, so you couldn't move to defend yourself, and would multiply the damage dealt on the next attack against you. While being attacked would end the effect, the huge damage bonus was usually enough to kill you instantly. Up until now, I hadn't seen a monster that used petrifying attacks, and Argo posted a list of all the mobs which should be avoided in her weekly newspaper. To my knowledge, it included every mob with a petrifying attack.

As I stared ahead, realizing the situation, my eyes darted to the effect timer of the person closest to me. Because the effect was so powerful, it usually only lasted a few seconds. Squinting to lock my keen vision on the tiny line of text next to his already tiny hp bar, nearly twenty meters away, I read off the time carefully. One minute and twenty-eight seconds remaining. I blinked. I must have read that wrong. Unopposed, that would be enough time to wipe out a huge chunk of the raid group. I glanced around, to everyone outside, the Boss Room, and found that most of them had been petrified too.

"This can't be happening..." I muttered aloud. Looking at the much easier to read timers next to their hp bars, I found that I hadn't misread the first. Turning back to the Boss Room, I pressed my hand hard against the invisible barrier which kept me from running inside to help. Well, it would let me in as soon as it started killing people... I grit my teeth in anger. While glaring ahead, something caught in the corners of my vision. Dark figures appeared, as if out of nowhere. Wait no, hadn't they been there the entire time? Blinking in confusion, I watched as three dark cloaked figures left their positions against the side walls and rushed in with agility far surpassing anyone in the raid group.

They flung themselves at the boss while it was still locked in an extremely long delay after that crazy attack. That's when I noticed their cursors. They were orange. PKers?! The time when I thought that no one in their right mind would attack one another had long since passed. It was about the time we were on the sixth floor when some of the lowlifes in this world had started robbing others on the road, some even attacking them and becoming orange to scare them into dropping all their stuff. It only escalated from there, and after some time, there was word of «Player Killers». Apparently there were such things in other games, depending on how the game was played, but overall they had always been looked upon in a negative light. Only now, they weren't just killing someone who would revive indefinitely, they were actually killing real people. Thinking back on it now, I don't know why I was surprised at the time. Humans had killed each other, all the way from the beginning of time. Why would that change here?

While all of these thoughts rattled around in my head, I stared straight forward, watching the three cloaked figures cut down the boss to its last dots of hp in mere seconds. At that point, two of them stepped back and allowed the the third to step right up to the enormous monster. That was when it recovered from the huge delay following its special attack. It lifted its spear high into the air with both hands, the light effect glowing while it struck directly downward on the head of the single cloaked person-

Particles of light filled the room. Standing there without moving, he had delivered the finishing blow right under the Boss' attack. Leaning hard against the invisible wall, I stumbled forward when it vanished before me. Activating «Flash» to jump a long way across the huge room, I made it up near the front of the frozen statues with my eyes locked on the backs of the three cloaked figures. In the next moment, the footsteps stopping at my side told me Keiko was with me.

I couldn't be sure if they were actually PKers, since the orange cursors only meant they had attacked others, giving no indication if they had gone as far as killing. And there was one other thing. All of their names showed next to their hp. 『Johnny Black』, 『Red-Eyed Xaxa』, and 『PoH』. I'd met these people before? Still, I stood there, weapons in hand and ready to fight if they had any intention of attacking while these guys were all petrified. However, they weren't moving, just standing there while the 『Result』 windows appeared all around at the end of the battle. Despite the huge 『Congratulations!』 banner appearing overhead, the scene was completely silent.

Then the one who had finished the boss tossed his right hand outward. My eyes locked onto a dagger. It was wickedly curved and I could feel that it was far stronger than even the «Harmonious Convoys» we had forged for ourselves. The weapon bounced across the floor a short distance before coming to a stop with a high pitched, metal scrape. Meanwhile, the man- it had to be a man, with wide shoulders like that, right? I saw the 『Last Attack』 bonus window floating in front of him while he turned slowly around, taking the LA bonus item and opening his inventory. With a few swift movements, he equipped the item and I felt my stomach clench. A long dagger appeared in his hand, smoothly curved with the look of a snake's fang and no guard to speak of. That weapon... was on a completely different level than anything I'd ever seen.

Now facing toward us, that person slowly brought the dagger up to his face and... licked it. With a long, slow motion, he licked up along the blade of the dagger. After flicking his tongue off the tip of the weapon, a huge grin so wide it showed white teeth stretched full across his face.

"It's showtime."

With two words, all three figures dashed with inhuman agility toward the exit. In hardly a moment, they were gone, up on the next floor somewhere. Who were those people- really? How had I met them, and gotten their names even? There really was no way to know, was there?

March 8, 2023, the Tenth floor was cleared. After everyone unfroze, we all just split up, not bothering to go activate the «Teleport Gate» as a group. No one was in the mood for a party after that.

Even after everyone went their separate ways, we stuck with Asuna, who said forcefully that the more people who reached this floor as soon as possible, the sooner we would clear this floor. Even if it was just a few minutes difference, the sooner we broke free of this prison, the better. We followed along, still unsure of what we should do after that.

The eleventh floor was an icy floor, with snow piled everywhere and arctic wolves lurking in the distance as we made the short trek to the town, visible from where we entered the floor. Walking slowly into the main town, I checked my map to find that it was called «Taft». We activated the «Teleport Stone» and left ourselves, not even staying to greet everyone who came up to the new floor.

Just what were those guys after? Somehow, they must have known that the boss would petrify everyone during its final stand. If they were really out to kill, they could have just waited. Finishing the Boss like they had, they'd inadvertently saved a large portion of the Raid Group. If it was all for the dagger, how did they even know that would be the special Boss drop?

Thinking how such a strong weapon had fallen into the hands of a group like that, I just had the worst sense of foreboding...


	131. Chapter 123

**Quiet Information**** Chapter 123**

Despite my foreboding feeling following the botched Boss Raid, practically nothing happened over the next few days. The mobs on the eleventh floor were the biggest jump in difficulty so far, so progress in the dungeon was slow and many of the frontliners simply started farming to gain levels before they tried to continue on. During this stagnant period, no one would talk about what had happened during the Boss Raid, though it was the question on everyone's mind after no one was there at the new floor opening. A somber feeling permeated the icy air of the eleventh floor.

A few days into this slow time, while we stuck to helping the undermanned clearing group, in favor of continuing with our quest for Ferin, Argo sent us a message. It was a little after 6:00 and we'd returned to town not long ago. Apparently, even being The Argo, she hadn't been able to pry in the info out of anyone as to what the hell had happened the other day. Looking at the message, I gulped, thinking it might be for the best not to tell her. But... I glanced at Keiko. It also felt like we should tell someone about what had happened there. Other people should know. Not through a message though.

『Meet us at The Colosseum tomorrow at noon.』 I didn't need to say anything else. She would know I meant the Colosseum at the center of «Tolbana» on the first floor, the town where we had held the meetings to discuss the first floor's boss raid last December. She gave an Ok, and we ended the conversation there. With that matter settled, we returned to what we'd been doing before she sent us a message. We were working on some pouches to hold potions, since our old pouch belts had been destroyed, and neither of us had thought to create them when we'd been making our kimonos. We'd been having some trouble without quick access to potions for the last few days, but this was the first opportunity we'd had to fix that. It wasn't much, a thin string attached to our obi's with some pouches on it was all, but it would be just fine as long as we could carry things in them.

Once I'd finished that, there was nothing left to do for the day. Like everyone else around here, we generally didn't do much for the remaining hours before just going off to sleep. The next day, we went to the dungeon as usual, but split up from the group at 11:30, telling them we had something else to do. We ran back to «Taft» and gated all the way down to the first floor. With our speed, it hardly took ten minutes to travel from the dungeon all the way to the outlying town where we were going to meet Argo. Arriving twenty minutes early at the sunken Colosseum, we slowly descended the steps into the center of the ring. Looks like we'd arrived before Argo for once. I glanced over my shoulder. We were all the way on the first floor, away from the frontline, away from The Army, away from The Force, away from everything. However, we were clearly out of place in this low level town. The few people who were here, probably just recently leaving the «Starting City» to start their own adventures, had stared after us as we moved through the town. They would have some interesting information to tell their friends later. Hopefully the info wouldn't travel to the front too quickly, I had a strong feeling that no one wanted the massive blunder in the last raid to get spread around. And wasn't not like 'two twins wearing kimonos' wouldn't give us away in an instant.

"We really should have worn something else..." I muttered, agitated. This was going to come back to bite us later...

"I actually agree with you on that for once..." Keiko spoke quietly. I turned toward her, sneaking another glance backward at the very top of the ring of seating. Even if they were low enough that their cursors didn't show, I could see the tops of numerous heads as they peered over the edge down at us. A tapping sound to my right. Almost directly past Keiko. I mentally stopped her from turning to look, while flicking my eyes in that direction, since I was already looking that way. Inside one of the tunnels leading out the sides of the arena, there was a short, cloaked figure. I guess we hadn't beaten her here after all.

Turning that way, we walked into the dark tunnel, out of sight of the crowd behind. "Good job not attracting attention. I see that's what you were making the other day... not to mention you still need to pay the tab for that info," she scowled from under her hood while speaking. Having anticipated this, I tossed her a small bag with the amount of Col we owed her for the other day. She checked the amount and stashed it in her inventory before going on. "Ok, let's make this quick. 'The Twins secretly met Argo on the first floor' is a good bit of info I don't want to get spread around until I get payed to spread it."

"Is... that so...?" we both asked dejectedly.

"Absolutely. Now, what happened?" she asked pointedly.

"Ok..." I took a deep breath and began to recall the event. "The Boss Raid was going fine right up until the Boss hit red. It jumped across the room, and when everyone turned to run after it, it used some kind of special attack to turn them all to stone."

"Petrification?" Argo commented, though it came out as a question. "But no one died from it, I checked the name of every frontliner in the clearing party and only one died during the raid," she pointed out. She knows every person in the clearing party by name? I thought for a moment before shaking the thought away. "Though, you really should know that both of your names are missing from the «Monument of Life»," she pointed out.

"Yeah, we knew that already."

I waved off the comment and was about to go on when she asked, "You already knew?"

"Yeah, they disappeared for no apparent reason a long time ago," I lied right through my teeth without a shred of hesitation. On the huge monument of stone, with every single name on it, there were two spots where instead of an inscription, there was just smooth, flat marble, separated only by the names 'Raiton', 'Rarin', and 'Reaker', though Reaker was already crossed off.

"Is that so..." Argo said in a low voice.

"Anyway, the Boss petrified everyone, but as you know, no one died. That's because right then, three Oranges appeared out of nowhere and killed the Boss."

"Orange players? How did they even get into the Boss Room?" Argo asked.

"I have no idea. We were already at the raid limit, when they just kind of appeared on the sides of the Boss Room, a couple seconds after everyone was frozen. They killed the Boss and it looked like the LA bonus was a really powerful dagger."

"Ah, so that's how it is..." Argo said suddenly.

"What?" Keiko asked.

And Argo answered, "About the same time that the Boss Raid was going on, I got some new information. Apparently, there was an NPC not far from the dungeon entrance. And I mean really close to the entrance. There's no way everyone could have missed it. It gave this information: 'When the Boss's health drops to red, it will use an attack which petrifies anyone looking at it.' That must be why they crashed the Raid, there's no other way three PKers would expect to LA the boss. But, there's one more thing that worries me. The second part of the information was like this: The Boss drops a special dagger to the one who gets the LA. It's extremely poisonous. It has a high chance of inflicting lethal poison on every attack, meaning that one cut is enough to instantly kill any target if the poison is effective. The other, stranger thing about it is that the dagger will also leave black scars on anyone it cuts who doesn't die from the poison."

I wasn't sure what to say for a few seconds, when Argo started speaking again. "This may be a guess, but I'm sure I'm right. Those PKers must have killed anyone who came close to the NPC so no one would find out about the Boss' special attack. Then, they snuck into the room with the Raid group and waited for the Boss to petrify everyone, since no one would see its special attack coming. That's when they jumped in to LA the boss and take the dagger. But why go to such lengths for a poisonous dagger? Even if they are PKers..." Argo trailed off as she lowered her head, obviously thinking deeply about what might be going on. "Let's leave it at this today. Let's call this trade equal, I'm getting out of here before those guys find us in here."

Before I could ask how she intended to get out of here without anyone seeing her, she drew a blue crystal out from her cloak. A «Teleport Crystal»? There were only two shops that sold those between the ninth and eleventh floor, and even then just one would cost fifty thousand Col. So far, we'd steered clear of them because of their hefty price tag. And she was using one just to get out of here? Just how much pocket change did this girl have?

Without another word to us, she whispered the command, "Teleport: Reu." and vanished, off to the fifth floor's main town. Now that she was gone, no one would know what we were doing here. Well, until Argo sold us out at least...

Whatever the case, it would be best for us to get out of here without being spotted, that would at least confuse them, since they wouldn't understand how someone can walk into a town and suddenly vanish. (As long as they didn't know about «Teleport Crystals» yet anyway) Since there would surely be a ton of people still waiting around the Colosseum seating for us to come out, we couldn't go that way. Some of the ones who knew the town better had surely moved to watch the other exit. Of course we couldn't just walk out of here. I felt a grin spread on my face when I thought of a plan.

We walked toward the outside exit while I clued Keiko in on my idea mentally. Standing a little back, the daylight shining in at our feet, we didn't nose around the corner to see if anyone was outside. If they were, they would see us looking, just as I could see those guys back at the seating area. Instead, we both kicked hard against the ground to activate «Flash». With the increase in our «Sprint» skill, the distance we could move had increased greatly from when we had first started using it. Without a sound, or any sign of our passing, we teleported straight across the street, onto the next road over, out of sight of anyone watching for us to exit.

From there, we just walked quietly out the closest gate before wheeling around and heading back toward «Starting City».


	132. Chapter 124

** A New Plan Chapter 124**

_Author Note: Sorry for the delay, Kerbal Space Program devoured my last few days' free time. o_o;_

It didn't take long for the rumors to spread. If anything, I was surprised that they even started at that, since Argo was the one supplying the information. Within a week, everyone on the frontline knew that we'd told Argo about what happened at the last Boss Raid. No one would say anything to our faces, but it couldn't be easier to tell how angry they were. Most of them flat out ignored us, and the ones who didn't did their best to make our lives as difficult as possible. Like when we were in the dungeon one day and came across a large group of powerful mobs. They didn't completely overwhelm us, but we were slowly retreating while whittling down their hp in order to avoid any unnecessary risks.

That's when we crossed paths with someone someone else. I didn't recognize him, but I could tell he was from the clearing group. Instead of backing us up and helping take care of the mobs, he ran off, then came back, training more monsters behind him. He led them to us and ran off, so we had even more enemies to deal with.

Well, that was the most extreme example, given that normal people would claim he was trying to kill us... Ok, maybe he _was_ trying to kill us, but the mobs just weren't strong enough for something like that. But whatever the case, we weren't on good terms with most of the clearing group now, especially with member of The Force. It seemed that those guys had taken it as a heavy blow to their pride. It came as a surprise that even Asuna was angry with us, though we hadn't gotten a chance to have her explain why.

All in all, it was looking like the only person whose opinion of us remained completely unchanged was the moody Kirito. But then again, he was hardly a 'part' of the clearing group. As of late, he gave an impression more like 'a guy who's just so strong that he happens to help because this is the only place for him to hunt'. Or something like that. He really only came around to fight the Bosses. And the clearing group was perfectly fine with that, since they hated him way more than they did us right now.

This tense situation continued all the way to the next Boss Raid a little over a week later, on the eighteenth. That day, we made it to the plaza in the eleventh floor's main town «Taft», which also doubled as the frontline town since it was the closest to the dungeon, returning from a few hours of light hunting. Shortly before the 2:00 pm meeting time, we walked into the town center.

It was more crowded than usual, but something clued me in immediately that something was wrong. I didn't know any of these faces. They weren't in the clearing group, so why were they all here? It was the middle of March; there weren't any particular holidays to give cause for a special event at this time of year. We moved closer and asked a guy what was going on. After nearly passing out when he looked at us, we managed to get an answer out of him.

"The next floor should open soon," he stated as if it was the most obvious thing.

"But it's not even 2:00 yet, there's no way the next floor could open Boss Raid even begins," I pointed out.

"What are you talking about? They probably should have killed the Boss by now, we're just waiting to the next floor to open."

"What?" we both asked flatly.

"The Raid started two hours ago, it should be over by now."

Realizing what this meant, I started to growl, "That... that bastard..." How did we not see this coming? Since Asuna was avoiding us, we gotten the time from a random member of The Force. We shouldn't have expected him to give us the right time. "Ugh..." we both sighed as we walked into the crowded field. After getting tricked like that, the last thing I wanted to do was show up with everyone else when the floor opened so they could laugh at us. I glanced over at Keiko, realizing she felt the same way.

"Come on, let's just go," I said sullenly.

"Where to?" Keiko asked, since I obviously didn't have any destination in mind.

I thought about it for a second before just answering, "Let's go get the next orb." Ferin had been sitting in our inventory for the past week or two since we got the last one, and she was probably getting impatient.

Wait, Ferin was just an NPC, she couldn't get impatient... could she? Shaking that thought away, we pushed our way through the increasingly dense crowd, moving toward the «Teleport Gate». Apparently our looks weren't enough to create a path in this situation. I let out a small chuckled and grinned when I thought of that. Finally forcing our way through, we stepped between the two huge icicles which formed the gate on this floor, their forms jutting from the ground like stalagmites in a cave.

"Teleport: Reu!" we called together, traveling all the way down to the fifth floor. As soon as we appeared we both staggered around for a few seconds when the heat hit us. We'd never moved from an arctic floor to a desert floor before, and I'd rather never do it again. Already feeling sweat beginning to form all over my skin, we started to push our way through the relatively crowded square. It wasn't as bad here, since it wasn't the top floor available, but my guess was that every hub town's center would be packed like this right now.

Getting clear of the crowd, we turned for the North. That was the direction Ferin had us go last time. Once we cleared the city, I pulled the crystal from our inventory and placed it into my sword. Like before, the blade lit up with soft blue light.

_Where am I?_ That question, full of fear as if from a lost child, filled the air around us. "Ferin?" I asked aloud. After her initial confusion and fear, I received a new kind of feeling. Something along the lines of 'it's been such a long time.' Or something like that. Right after that came one so complicated it couldn't really be expressed in words. It was something like realizing that she still existed, though I couldn't really tell what that was supposed to mean.

"We need you to lead us back to the place from last time." Keiko said clearly, and a little slowly. Ferin gave us a heading, a little off of North, and we got going.

When we arrived at the cave again, we had to clear the sand away from the stone platform before we could get to the next riddle. Since we'd have plenty of time with it, we just copied it down without really reading it the first time.

From there, we got on our way back to town. As we walked, I read aloud.

"『The second of the four is in the deepest pit of the darkest cavern. You must travel to the land of Earth. Through the Southern mountains, descend into the endless ravine. You must continue to fall, all the way to the bottom. Only there will you find 『The Master of Earth』. Defeat it to claim the second orb. But beware, descending into the caverns is the easy part. They will fight to keep what they have claimed.』"

We continued walking for a minute while it all sank in. Keiko looked my way. "Well, let's get to it then."

"Yeah," I nodded, "but there are a couple preparations to do first." She raised an eyebrow and I grinned.


	133. Chapter 125

**The Second Orb**** Chapter 125**

With the blue teleport effect dropping around me, my feet tapped lightly onto the rough ground. Even in town, I could feel the uneven terrain through my shoes. My new shoes. I'd replaced our old boots from our last outfits. While they hadn't been as destroyed as everything else, another couple weeks in them after that had left them little more than lumps of leather. Even if their durability had never been completely depleted, going without proper repair for so long had taken its toll. Since we were about to go into another crazy dungeon, I figured we should have some new shoes for it, and took a few minutes to create some new ones.

They were nothing fancy, not even boots in this case. With the high defensive stats our kimonos provided, we didn't need extra from tall leather boots, so I just crated some regular shoes of a whitish silver, like most of our other basic equipment.

Walking with a little more bounce in my step, I noticed how different the shoes felt against the ground, compared to my old boots. The most notable difference was the thin fabric. Instead of a thick leather, I'd used the hide from some frost giants we'd killed on the twelfth floor. It made them pretty durable without the need for a heavier material. It allowed me to feel what was beneath my feet much more clearly.

Moving through the city slowly, I noticed how it was a bit busier than usual. It was around the middle of the afternoon, 3:00 or 4:00, so there normally wouldn't be many people around, in any city really. However, since the clearing group had opened the next floor(_without us!_) today, it looked like a number of people who had stayed around for the next floor opening were starting to filter back to their regular floors, going on late afternoon hunts, or just retiring early. For that reason, we picked up our pace on the way out of town, having drawn the attention of virtually everyone we'd passed so far.

"I'm starting to think... we might want clothes just for traveling in town..." I mumbled.

"That... might actually be a good idea..." Keiko mumbled back, slowly lifting her arms to wrap around herself.

After walking for another minute, I asked, "Let's run?"

"Gladly." With her enthusiastic approval, we both shot off so fast, no one seemed to be sure what happened for a few seconds. By then, we were long gone. Slowly coming to a stop on the rocky ground, we both looked around for a moment. We'd lost them after all.

Once we realized that, I pulled the notepad from our inventory where we'd written the next riddle. We'd easily figured out the first part of this one. The 'land of earth', and 'southern mountains' had been a dead give away. There was only one mountainous floor so far, the second. So that's where we stood. Eying the floor map, I turned toward the South and we got going. We ran for a few minutes through the winding mountain paths before the rocky cliffs suddenly cut away around us. Skidding to a stop, we found ourselves standing on a stone bridge crossing above a shallow cut into the mountains. For some reason, this place felt kind of familiar, though I couldn't quite place why.

"According to the riddle, we have to 'descend into the endless ravine.' Well, it's not endless, and I don't know if I'd call it a ravine... You think this is the place?" I asked.

"Well, I don't think that's what it means by 'endless'. I'd say it refers to how it goes as far as we can see." Upon hearing that, I glanced both ways to see what she meant. Since it obviously couldn't just go on forever, I watched the two paths as they ran along a wide curve, cutting through the surrounding mountains until it eventually disappeared behind them.

"So that's what you mean..." I realized aloud. This 'ravine' probably traveled a good distance around the floor. Maybe even in a circle, which would make it truly endless. "If that's the case, let's get going." We both hopped off the bridge, landing in a crouch at the bottom. A shock went up my legs, but as expected, the fall damage was barely enough to make my hp bar flicker.

"Now, which way is down?" Keiko asked, looking to both sides. It was a really shallow slant, so it took a minute to figure out that the ground was falling lower to our right side- counterclockwise around the floor. Running that way, we soon found that this area was populated by a large number of green slime mobs. They were just some basic floor two mobs, so we could have kicked them aside they were so weak.

As we continued quite a ways down the path, I became aware that the rock walls on either side were rising around us. Or rather we were slowly moving downward as we ran. With our speed, what may have been a very long walk only took a number of minutes, even with the minor delay to kill the numerous slimes along the way. Arriving at the end of the path downward, there was a jagged cliff wall a long way up to the top. At this elevation, there was probably little more than a meter or two between us and the underside of this floor. That said, I wondered how we could possibly continue down farther. Well, without falling a hundred meters to the surface of the first floor anyway.

Nevertheless, we walked up to the cliff face, finding a small crack at the base. It wasn't particularly large; if we weren't so tiny compared to everyone else, it might have been difficult to navigate. After a short distance in the cramped space, it widened out again, if slightly, into a more well defined corridor. The walls were still clearly cave-like, with jagged edges, but they weren't all over the place like before. We were forced to move in single file though.

Wary of traps, we proceeded slowly, our walking pace only slowing the farther we moved farther from the sun outside, further into the dark. "That's it, we need more light," Keiko sighed and the sound of bells echoed off the close walls.

She passed me a little crystal shard and we both said, "Light!" at our command, the magical shards released a pale glow to illuminate the narrow hall. We pressed on, faster now that we could see where we were going.

We walked for some time. Unfortunately, we no longer appeared on the floor map in this area, so we couldn't be sure where we were heading. The path was mostly straight. When it turned, the changes in direction were gradual, long curves, which soon left both of us without any idea which direction we were actually moving. Thankfully, as the path wore on, it gradually increased in size, until we were both able to walk side-by-side again.

After nearly an hour of walking without coming across any sort of dangers, we spotted a door ahead. Careful not to rush toward it and trigger some sort of trap, we proceeded with increased caution. It turned out to be unnecessary, as nothing happened on the way. We stood before the door which appeared to be made of a different stone than the rest of the hall and I gave it a glance up and down. It was black and relatively smooth, with only a few curving swirls extruded from the surface. There was one big line running right down the middle, so it must have been a door.

Approaching slowly, I held my hand up to the surface, but stopped at the last moment. There was some magic on this door, similar to the one which had suddenly teleported us during that nightmarish Christmas event last year. As I held my hand a few centimeters from the surface, I realized that it was different somehow. This one wouldn't teleport us. However, that left me with no idea of what it _would_ do.

"Think its safe?" I asked, turning back to my sister.

"Heh, got me," she chuckled, "if not, let's see who can run away faster?"

"If this is some sort of trap, there's way too much tunnel to cover if the whole place collapses around us," I answered flatly to refute her joke. "It would be a better idea to have the teleport crystals ready." After our new shoes, that was the second part of our preparations. Last time we'd had to run like hell to get back out. If something similar happened now, we would always have the backup plan of simply teleporting to safety. Truly, it was a blessing. 'Use this and you will definitely survive,' basically. Well, they cost a hundred thousand Col, so we would only use them as a last resort, if we really felt we couldn't get our on our own. But it made me feel safer, just knowing we had them.

Taking out the crystals, we both readied ourselves. We'd agreed before hand that if we had to teleport out, we would call to go to «Reu», the fifth floor's central city, simply because it was the shortest name to call out in an emergency. Gulping, I tightened my grip on the small, hexagonal item with my left while reaching slowly forward with my right. My fingers came to the stone- a firm surface appeared beneath my hand and I leaped back. For a few moments, the muscles around my mouth strained as I prepared to call the command to get out. Waiting for some sign of trouble, we stood like that for nearly a minute. When it was finally apparent that nothing was going to happen, I stepped forward again, this time more calmly. At least I knew there wasn't a trap set as soon as I touched the door.

Reaching out again, I slowly pressed my palm against the solid thing from before. Within a few millimeters of the stone door, a red glow appeared. As I pressed harder, the red sheen spread out, reaching maybe ten centimeters(4in) across before falling off into complete transparency.

"It's a magical barrier," Keiko said as we both studied it.

"But... different than the others," I said slowly. Keiko reached out and pressed her own palm against the intangible surface as well.

"For some reason, it's red." Why red? I wondered, narrowing my eyes as I thought.

Then, "Ah! It's red!"

"Yeah, we both noticed that already..."

"If I'm right..." taking no notice of my sister's sighing comment, I swiped open my menu and switched to the menu, operating the controls practically before they had time to appear at my fingertips. From our storage, I pulled the orb we'd received from the first dungeon.

"That's right!" Keiko gasped when she realized what I was thinking. I reached out, pressing the shiny red orb against the red barrier. Before us, a large red surface suddenly appeared in full, stretching all the way into the walls surrounding the doorway. After a moment, a huge white crack appeared in the barrier and we both realized that it was about to break.

Surprisingly, when the glass-like material broke, it didn't sound like glass breaking. Even though everything else did. Kind of counter-intuitive, isn't it? With a bell-like sound, somewhat similar to the sound effect which played all the time while operating our menus, the perfectly smooth pane shattered into hundreds, even thousands of pieces. I felt my eyes widen when I saw this. It was exactly the same as when, all the way back at the beginning, we had fought that demon wolf. When it created a magical barrier, it had broken, leaving shards which shattered upon impact with the ground. They were the same shards we were currently using to light the way.

Despite my realization, it was Keiko who acted. Grabbing my inventory window, still open from when I drew the little red orb out a moment ago, she lifted the little screen. After hesitating at her shoulder for a mere instant, her hand swiped out nearly at the speed of a Sword Skill, swiping across in front of her three times at different angles. Within an instant after her move, the remainder of the shards crashed to the floor and disappeared.

I couldn't help but grin. "Was that «Rebound»?" I asked.

"Haha, I guess so," Keiko replied, scratching the back of her head. I could feel how she was a bit embarrassed over using a Sword Skill like that, so automatic it was on the level of an instinct. The attack she had used was our newest «Dagger» technique. It was a defensive skill, useful for parrying and countering against weak attacks due to its high speed and low Delay. We'd only learned the skill in the past week, so we couldn't even come close to emulating the unusually high speed without the System Assist, unlike the Sword Skills we'd consistently practiced for many months since we screwed up our character data and lost the assistance. Still, she must have used that one either because we had been practicing it a lot lately and it was the first that came to mind. Or it might have been for the wide swings to catch more of the crystals within the window. Either way, it was a pretty impressive use of the new attack.

I smiled while tucking the red orb back into our inventory. "Looks like we can keep going now."


	134. Chapter 126

**Into the Dark**** Chapter 126**

After the doors, the hall widened enough that we could walk comfortably again. The path stretched on a long way and as we walked, I opened our inventory to check how many of those shards Keiko had managed to collect. That barrier was red, so maybe it's something different, I thought while I scrolled down the menu with all sorts of things inside. Giving up on that, I just set the filters to exclude all weapons, armor, clothing, crafting, useable, valuable, and miscellaneous item types. That left, well, nothing. But there was still an item listed anyway. «Blessed Twins Shard of Power I». To my surprise, those ones had been the same as the others we already had, because we were now carrying seventy-six of them(including the two we were holding). Leaving out the nine we had left after using some for our clothes, it meant she'd managed to catch sixty-seven of them.

"Good job, that move got us sixty-seven more shards," I pointed out, showing her the window. In response, she puffed her chest out and gave a few bragging comments before we both started laughing.

Some time later, we finally reached the end of this path. Surprisingly- and more importantly extremely confusing- was that at the end of the hall, there was a spiral staircase leading downward. "Onii-chan, aren't we already at the bottom of this floor?"

"Yeah..." Both unsure of how this was possible, we reached down with one foot to tap the first step, as if it might all be an illusion and as soon as we stepped on it we would fall through to the first floor. "It's real alright..." I mumbled, pressing the toe of my shoe against the solid stone. Throwing our hands up on this making any sense, we started down the stairs. They made pretty tight spirals down and down and down. Where in Aincrad could there be room for something like this?

I pictured the floating castle in my mind. First floor, the pillars, the tower, the second floor above. Everything else was empty space, just air. Then it hit me. Didn't we climb to the next floor though the tower? Who ever said that was the only place to go? What about all of the pillars to the next floor? While someone would certainly have noticed if there was a door into one of them, it shouldn't be a surprise that there could be stuff inside them, just like the tower!

"So that's how it is..." I mumbled, and Keiko let out an 'ahh' sound. At least we knew where we were now, and how we could possibly be here. The next question was: how far down will these stairs go? All the way to the bottom of the first floor? And were there going to be any monsters along the way? To find those answers, we just kept walking.

…

If I had to guess, the stairs _did_ go all the way to the base of the first floor, because it felt like we just kept walking forever before finally arriving to stop on the bottom two steps of the stairs. With absolutely no light to speak of, everything fell off to complete black outside the effect of the glowing shards in our hands. "How about..." I mumbled when I had an idea. I removed Ferin from the hilt of my sword and replaced the little crystal with the glowing shard. The sudden brightness forced my eyes closed for a number of seconds before I could even squint through the light. Instead of the tiny shard, my whole sword now emit a bright light to force away the surrounding darkness.

Keiko followed my example and soon we could see a much larger area around us than before, maybe ten meters across before the light fell off quickly. Judging by the way it stopped, the surfaces here absorbed the light, not allowing it to bounce and provide ambient lighting. Most objects outside allowed very strong ambient lighting, that was the only reason it was possible to hunt at night, since there were no lights outside town. It seemed that the exact opposite was happening here. Even with the bright light emanating from our swords, I couldn't see the any of the single curved wall anywhere except for directly at our backs.

Then again, I couldn't see much of anything from here. No monsters, no Boss, no way to continue downward, just a big empty room. We would have to move toward the other side before we found anything... probably.

We stepped carefully off of the staircase, placing both feet on the strangely textured new floor. Instead of stone, the floor here was bare dirt. I scratched the bottom of my shoe across the sandy, dry dirt for a moment before looking back up.

"UUURRRWWWWEEEIIII" the outlandish sound that echoed from every direction forced us to cover our ears for a few moments, until it finally ended. Going back-to-back, we drew our daggers with our free hands, though we still couldn't see anything.

A tremble rose from the ground at our feet. Both diving away from each other on instinct, a huge crash exploded from the dirt in the next moment. I spun back to see what had caused it. My eyes found a figure, but couldn't track it as well as normal in the darkness. After just a moment, it disappeared, apparently into one of the walls overhead.

"This thing can travel through the walls and ground!" almost shouting, to Keiko, who was now crouched a few meters away. Whatever it was, we couldn't fight it while it was inside the walls and floor. Turning in place, I waited for some indication of its second appearance. A crash from behind sent me whirling to face it, my weapons crossed in front of me to block.

A huge weight crashed against me. Nowhere near strong enough to hold it back, I went barreling backward, both weapons knocked from my hands as numerous claws and teeth cut into me all over. I hit the ground and tumbled back, managing to dig my feet in and stop where I'd heard my weapons land. Grabbing up the two blades and fighting to stagger to my feet again, I grinned. Eating that attack had cost nearly three quarters of my hp.

But now I knew what we were up against. "It's The Boss, 『The Master of Earth』!"


	135. Chapter 127

**『****The Master of Earth****』**** Chapter 127**

_Author Note: _ _Sorry, I kind of went on an anime binge (Future Boy Conan, Dennou Coil, Another, Infinite Statos, Freezing, Lyrical Nanoha, & Familiar of Zero) and haven't written a word in the last three days. T-T_

While I chugged a potion, we both ran toward the center of the room, stopping with a little distance between us. Here, the Boss wouldn't be able to attack us from the walls. We let out slow breaths and waited for the ground shake that would give it away.

"There!" Sliding sideways, the form of the monster burst from beneath us. In the same movement, I slid my heel across in front of me to face the Boss, already swinging inward with the three-hit «Sharpnail». While it was still the hardest to do correctly, my speed had increased greatly in these last months. I landed two of the three hits before the fast moving enemy was out of range.

With a cry, the huge beast flew a little ways before flopping down on its side with a tremendous crash. Looking after it in the dark, I finally got a good look at its hp. Eleven bars in all, though a quarter of the first was already depleted. "So... lots of health, but it relies on the ground for its defense. Lots of attack power, it's too slow to land its hits." A large grin spread on my face, "Now that we know what it's made of, we can go all out."

"Let's go for it," Keiko grinned back, swishing her blade in front of her. While the 『Master of Earth』 was still getting up, we dashed forward closing before we launched another attack. Once in range, I shifted my sword up, then backward. Bringing it forward from the shoulder initiated my newest one-handed sword Sword Skill, «Sliding Dash»(1) Kicking forward, I flew across the ground even faster than a full sprint, sliding across the floor with no resistance until my extended blade stabbed into the side of the huge monster. A dozen more blows followed within the next moments, and its first bar practically disappeared, along with most of the second.

By then, it had made it back to its feet and spun so fast it blew dirt up in every direction. I swung my sword down to deflect incoming claws while jumping back, halting briefly when I finally got a good head-on look at this Boss. It was a huge mole, not so much a realistic one as an anime-styled one. It had big rounded body with dark fur going all over. In a word... cute. After that demonic first centaur thing, this was... kind of disappointing actually. If it wasn't an enemy and trying to kill us, I'd as soon keep this thing as a pet.

My errant thoughts were brought back into focus when the huge mole started making a strange rumbling sound. Was it going to morph into some sort of nightmare creature too? Readying myself for whatever happened next, I watched as its body warped strangely, expanding sideways for a few moments. Then, with an audible 'pop' sound, it split clear in two. I blinked. There were two cursors now. It had cloned itself? Staring at the two, I quickly found the catch. Each one only had five health bars. So that's how it was. It had split its remaining hp into two separate bodies. With this new trick, we'd have to go on the defensive again, until we knew if it had split its strength as well.

Both moles dove into the ground disappearing completely. I glanced into the top corner of my view, seeing that my hp was around four thousand points, about three quarters full. I decided not to let it maul me again in the next clash since that would be dangerous. I'd have to block to determine its strength without letting it hit me this time. Since such a thing wouldn't work very well against an attack from beneath us, we moved toward the far wall. Since they either came from the floor or walls, they would have to attack from there eventually as long as we were in range.

A tremor, and we both took wide stances. I could feel it through my shoes, coming from the ground this time. After a few moments, we both slid sideways and it came up between us again. Except, where was the other? A second crash on my left and I spun to face the wall we'd moved toward. Flying down from a little overhead, the second mole was diving right toward me.

In a weak stance like this, there was no way I could block a powerful attack. I jumped up slightly from the ground and turned sideways in midair. Kicking both feet out as hard as I could, I planted them into the side of the mole which had just come up next to me, and went flying out of the way. My shoulder hit the ground and a roll brought me to my feet, around the same time both moles smashed into the ground and wall, disappearing again.

"So that's how they do it now, from both directions," Keiko said as we waiting for the next attack. Despite the huge moles burrowing into them, none of the surfaces were damaged afterward. They didn't leave holes where they broke into and out of the ground or walls, probably so we couldn't jump in after them. When the next attack came, we knew what to expect. I hopped sideways to avoid the first attack, not even glancing to that side while Keiko cut into the first mole. My eyes were fixed directly ahead, locked onto the enemy which attacked a moment after.

I brought my sword down and it began to glow, then in a curved arch upward. The light effect trailed behind as I activated a basic «Slant», landing the attack directly against the huge mole's outstretched claws. Strong! I clamped my jaw shut hard with the effort it took not to get crushed under the attack. Spinning one foot back, I ducked low and slid my blade away to break away from the unfavorable deadlock and allowing the monster to fly overhead. Unfortunately, I didn't get away without it flicking an attack and catching me from behind before it went.

Wincing as pain lashed up and down my back, I shook it off in a few moments. My hp was almost fully recovered and that glancing blow had hardly taken a sliver out of it. "Well, now we know it hasn't lost any strength by splitting," I grunted.

Countering the new attack pattern wasn't difficult though. Since there were only two of them and the second attack was always aimed for me, I would just dodge both and allow Keiko to attack the one that came up from beneath. It wasn't the fastest method, but who knew what they would do if we didn't allow a wall to attack from. While fighting in the middle of the room may allow us to land many attacks after disrupting one of theirs, as we had done for its first bar, it wouldn't be nearly as effective when there was still another enemy to deal with. So we stuck to the easy strategy and slowly cut their hp away. It took a few minutes to take out their first of five, but it wasn't that bad.

When Keiko finally landed the attack to take out the first bar of one, both moles collapsed momentarily, with loud cries. I swung a quick Sword Skill into the one that landed next to me after missing its airborne lunge, taking out the last bit of its first bar as well, but then the enemies started to change again and we both backed off as fast as we could.

"No way..." we both muttered as they split in two again. That wasn't just a one-time thing!? After all four moles dug back into the ground, each with just two bars of hp now, we both looked toward each other.

"Should we try to take them down one by one? So they don't keep multiplying?" Keiko asked.

"I was thinking the same thing, though they don't have any more bars to split."

"That is a good point-" Right as Keiko began to reply, another tremor shook the ground beneath us. Dropping the conversation, we both jumped sideways. However, nothing came up from under us.

"Then-" realizing where the attack must be coming from, my eyes darted around to find shapes in the darkness. Without looking, I thrust my dagger out to my left, bouncing an incoming attack before a huge weight blasted me in the back. I flew forward, one of the moles flying out of the darkness in front of me to swing a powerful clawed slash directly into my midsection.

The next few seconds were a jumble of pain and dirt kicking up in every direction. One solid crash against the back of my head, and a moment to realize that I'd blasted straight into the wall followed, before I desperately fought to bring myself back to my feet. After a few failed attempts to make my body obey, I managed to get back up. Their combined attacks had knocked me down into yellow, maybe forty percent hp. At least I'd kept hold of my weapons this time.

I started half-running back toward the other side of the room where Keiko was also getting up from a crater in the wall, only visible at this distance from the bright glow of her sword. I couldn't help but limp from the pain still coursing through one of my legs.

Another tremor passed underneath me. My eyes widened as I heard simultaneous explosions in every direction. The attacks were coming in at me at from every angle, all at once. Nowhere to dodge. I froze. A low breath escaped my lips when I realized what this meant.

My body moved, not by my will, but by my sister's. Kicking hard against the floor, she forced me to activate the movement skill which I had forgotten, «Flash». Suddenly moving past all the attacks, I stood near the middle of the room, perfectly safe. A huge round of cries rose up behind with a massive crash, but hardly noticed. Knees going weak, I slid to the ground. "I thought that was the end..." I breathed. That was the first time I'd actually thought I was about to die. Letting out another shaky breath, I fought off the terrified feeling welling up inside me. This fight wasn't over yet.

Standing again, I tried to keep my legs from shaking while Keiko approached quickly. "So much for focusing them down one at a time," she shook her head. "We'll have to get in any attacks we can manage, whenever we can. Let's finish this up," she said with a serious expression. I nodded, then pulled another high-end potion from one of my pouches and drank it down in a single gulp. My eyes flicked up to the steadily rising bar in the corner of my vision. As long as that didn't hit zero, I would be ok.

It will be ok...

Another tremor, and I tightened my grip until it hurt. Win. We have to win... I could feel my heart hammering, terrified adrenaline speeding up my consciousness. Slowing down everything else. Four explosions, at ninety degree angles to each other and my eyes focused on the two coming toward me. My pulse beat so fast, it felt like the enemies were standing still. Two bars of hp, with their second bar about three quarters depleted. We hadn't caused that damage. They must have been hurt earlier when they attacked me. Maybe that crash was them hitting each other.

These thoughts traced across my mind so fast I could hardly be sure if I actually thought them. At the same time, my left hand lowered toward my waist, my other crossing over in front of my body to sit beside it. Swinging both blades at the same time, I activated both «Rebound» with my dagger, and a basic «Slant» with my sword. The powerful attacks, with every ounce of my strength, crashed into the claws extending toward me. The enemies' attacks weren't stopped, but my dagger skill continued, along with a «Horizontal» from my sword. In an instant, both weapons traveled across in front of me again, light effects bursting everywhere when they collided with each set of claws aiming for my life. The final downward slant of «Rebound» was again paired with a single Sword Skill in my right hand, another huge blast when I successfully deflected the incoming attacks.

While the moles recoiled, stunned by their Delay only momentarily, my body reeled back from the huge recoil of my successive attacks. Planting my right foot behind me to keep my balance, I turned in place spinning as I brought my sword up. "Blast them away," I told myself through gritted teeth. My sword raised up, pointed off of my left shoulder a bright light effect forming around it. I wasn't sure if it was «Slant», «Horizontal», or even «Whirl» in this case, but it didn't matter. I just had to blow these things away.

"Uoohh!" A loud cry tore from my mouth as I swung the blade across my body. A single line of light traveled in front of me, followed by a tremendous blast. The air in front of me warped for a moment from the massive force. And all at once, the two moles were gone. After a quarter of a second, an absurdly, ridiculously huge explosion shook the entire area. Directly ahead, I saw a massive cloud of dirt and dust billow from the source of the explosion. At the same time, Keiko managed to take out the first bar of the other two. She grabbed my elbow and we started to retreat to a safe distance, in case they split again, or did something even worse, like suddenly changing into freakish demons.

Surprisingly, they actually did split again, even without any hp bars to split up. Instead, they split their single bar. But they didn't split it two like they had before. They split in ten. The twenty moles before us were soon joined by the twenty from the moles I'd blasted away, and we both stood, unsure of what to even do after this. The moles dug into the ground, all forty of them, and we brought our weapons up, readying ourselves.

That's when I noticed my sword wasn't glowing anymore. Glancing down, I realized that the magic shard in it was missing. It must have fallen out, or maybe it broke during that last attack? They did seem pretty fragile after all. Whatever the case, even if it had only fallen out, now wasn't the time to search for it. I flew through my item menu to retrieve another and had my sword glowing with illuminating light again in a moment.

"So what's the plan?" I asked while I worked on getting the shard.

"Double «Whirl»?" Keiko suggested.

"No, if they haven't split their strength, I don't think that will take enough of them before they hit us. And if they hit us with so many, we'll die instantly."

"I see your point, then how about «Flash Draw» and «Flash»?"

I shook my head again. "Sorry, I still have thirty seconds left on my «Flash» cooldown." The powerful movement ability could only be used once every two minutes, and I'd used it about a minute and a half ago. By this point, I had finished replacing the crystal and my sword now illuminated the area around me.

"Then plan Z it is! Run for our lives!"

"Ehh!?" But I couldn't argue on that point, since the entire ground began to shake beneath our feet.

"GO!" we shouted, kicking off and running along the circular wall as fast as we possibly could. All around, dark objects appeared flying toward us. Crashes and explosions rang all around as they bombarded the entire area, always a little behind our fleeing selves. In the bottom corner of my vision, a small cooldown timer for «Flash» ticked down until I would be able to use it again. Once it finished counting down, we'd be able to- In the middle of that thought, a number of moles launched themselves at us from the front. Kicking forward, my whole body tipped backward to slide along the ground as they flew overhead.

Once they had gone past, I bent my knees, pushing my feet against the ground to flip myself upright again. Kicking down hard, we both continued our mad dash. Moles started firing from the walls, and even diving down from the ceiling. Then, my cooldown finished. "Ready!" I shouted over the deafening noise all around us.

We swung hard to the left, turning to the center of the room. Skidding to a stop, we waited, after everything suddenly went quiet. We both stepped back-to-back again, waiting. Each of these things only had one tenth of a regular hp bar, so a single powerful «Flash Draw» would be able to finish them. If we did it right, we might be able to take them all out in one go. Sheathing both weapons, we stood with our hands on our swords, waiting. My breath came in shallow pants.

Then the ground began to shake and we drew our weapons. Crossing the blades over our bodies once, ceremonially, before dropping them to our hips, we focused our minds while dark figures appeared in every direction. There were so many that there was hardly any room between them. They all flew in, a wall of claws pointing in from everywhere. My hand moved at the same time as my foot.

Standing a few meters from where I was before, I slowly replaced the my sword in its sheath before turning around. As expected, all the moles had been defeated, their tiny hp bars falling to nothing from the single attack. I let out a shuddering breath. We did it, we won. We would live through this.

Wait. They didn't shatter. Like the centaur, they had only fallen once beaten. Soon, they would stand up again. Before that, we had to find the orb. Running over, I found that Keiko was ahead of me, as she stood up, holding a yellow object high.

"Found it, let's get out of here!" Turning together, we started for the stairs. However, we were only halfway there when a... strange sound stopped us. Some sort of whooshing, gurgling sound. Looking back, it was just as I feared. All the moles were losing their color, turning into pure dark things and slowly standing again. However, unlike the previous Boss, they didn't chase us. Instead, they started jumping. One after another, they jumped, their huge bodies causing the whole area to shake. Soon, all forty dark beings were jumping all at the same time and the entire area quaked like it was going to break apart.

Oh god, it probably _was_ going to break apart.

(1) Shameless Kingdom Hearts reference. X3


	136. Chapter 128

** Running Chapter 128**

Bits of rock and debris slowly fell around us as we made for the staircase. Once we hit the steps, we started running as fast as we could, taking them three stairs at a time. Then, when I went to take another step, my foot slipped straight off and I went headfirst into the... not stairs. Pushing myself up, I saw that the stairs had flattened themselves out somehow, forming a smooth ramp instead. And not one that would be easy to climb, I realized as I dug my feet in hard just to keep from sliding backward any more. Keiko, who hadn't fallen as badly gave me a hand up and we started climbing again, though slower now that we could hardly manage a foothold on this surface.

To make things even worse, that's when lights appeared all on the path ahead, purple winged monsters appearing in our way. I only considered using the teleport crystal briefly before drawing my sword. A steep ramp and some small fry mobs in our way? Hardly life threatening. Like the first orb dungeon, the monsters blocking our way back out were only normal mobs from this floor. I recognized these ones as the 『Gargoyles』 that inhabited the second floor's dungeon. Knowing that, we easily cut our way through without slowing our pace.

"Hordes of weak mobs is only intimidating the first time," I grinned, and Keiko laughed. That's when a new sound came from behind. Looking over my shoulder as I ran, I saw the path behind crumbling away. And it was catching up fast. Not something we could outrun like this.

Pulling the teleport crystals out, we both chanted, "Teleport: Reu!" A flash of red all around. In a moment, I could see red lines traveling through all the surfaces around us, fading in a short moment and disappearing. We called the teleport command again, and the same red lines flashed into being again. We couldn't teleport here?

With everything collapsing away literally at our heels, I shouted, "PLAN B!" and threw both of us into a «Sliding Dash», tearing up the steep path, through all the mobs, and creating a little more distance from the dangerous dropoff at the same time. Once we had exhausted the entire five meters the attack would allow us to move, I could hardly regain my footing, so I just launched the same Sword Skill again. Resorting to just using «Sliding Dash» over and over again, we charged upward once more, gaining distance from the collapsing ground now.

Like that, we charged all the way up the hundred meter tall pillar, though the actual distance we ran was much, much farther, winding around and around inside. Finally breaking into the straight path, we kicked into a full sprint blasting through the enemies in our way, all the way up the long passage, through the cramped entrance, and into the ravine. Outside, no more enemies appeared to block our path and we slowed down, panting from the long run.

Keiko held up the orb with a smile. This one was yellow. Then a tremble shook everything around us. Suddenly tensing up again, we both realized we weren't out of this yet. Kicking off again, we ran through the valley, slowly winding its way around the second floor. There were still no monsters, and I wasn't entirely sure what was happening now, but everything around us just kept shaking. It took a few minutes before I realized what it was. Looking to either side, the distance to the sides was definitely decreasing. The whole valley was crushing in on us. How long was this anyway? The floor itself was only ten kilometers across, but this valley just kept going...

As we ran I figured out the problem. It was a math thing- because we were running in a circle instead of a straight line. The distance around a circle is more than three times farther than going straight through it. That's why this was taking so long. Not that we could actually do anything about it. Gritting my teeth, I just kept running. The path just kept going, slowly circling upward, while the walls closed in on both sides.

This kept on for ten, twenty minutes even, before things got really bad. With hardly enough room left to move side-by-side, we both kept going, running for all we were worth. Even if the walls were moving in incredibly slowly, I still couldn't be sure if we would get through or not. It didn't help that I had no idea how much farther it was either.

I finally bumped shoulders with Keiko, sliding in behind her now that we didn't even have enough room to move with both of us together. Even if we didn't expect it to work, we both pulled out our teleport crystals again, and panted out the teleport command another flash of red all around indicated that even this area was blocking them from working.

In a few more minutes, we hardly even had enough room left to run, both sides of the valley looming high over us, hardly any more time before they crushed us flat. I looked upward, the deep reds of sunset beginning to fade to night overhead. Through the rumbling all around, and my own heavy breathing, I could hear the evening bell chime, telling everyone that it was now 6:00 pm – nighttime.

Past Keiko, I could see something moving. Hopping up as I ran, I got a better look. Some green slimes, normal mobs in this area. Though from the look of them, they weren't coming to attack us- the normal behavior of all enemies in this world.

"That's it!" Keiko shouted.

"What's it?" I asked.

"There's a crack up ahead, we can duck in there." That was a good idea, because I could barely move anymore by this point. Looking up, I saw that we were nearly there, right when my shoulders got caught between the walls.

"Ahh!" I couldn't help shouting when I felt the walls beginning to crush me for a moment, before spinning sideways. Gulping down the pain, I started to sidle through the remaining space, the last few meters until the safety of the split in the rock. Unfortunately, due to my ridiculous bust, I wasn't much thinner this way than the other, and with hardly a meter to go, the walls were again beginning to crush me. "Just ignore it," taking a long step and scraping along the rocks, "as long as it's squishy and not bone," _scraaapppee,_ "I'll be fine..." Slipping through the last bit, I stepped into the safe area. "Owowowow," I rubbed my scraped up chest, wincing.

"At least we're safe, now we just need to find a way out." Keiko glanced over at the huge slime inching away from us while she spoke, then shrugged. Shortly after she finished speaking, the last space between the cliffs disappeared with a crash. Another strong rumble through the ground and shower of rocks falling from overhead caused us both to look back. Staring straight ahead, we saw that the cliff face was still moving toward us. Much faster this time. Stumbling over backward as the rocks pushed against us, we both scrambled away.

Head whipping side to side, I desperately tried to figure a way out. While the cliffs were rocky enough that we might be able to climb them, there was nowhere near enough time for that. Then I looked at the slime near the far wall. Watching it for a moment, an old memory surfaced.

"That's it!" Grabbing Keiko's hand, I leaped, high into the air, turning to slip right over top of the huge slime. Hitting the ground and rolling, we landed with our backs to the wall at the deepest part of the slice into the wall.

"I remember this now!" Keiko exclaimed. Last December, when were were clearing the second floor, we'd accidentally been caught by this slime one time and found that it used some sort of passage to the first floor. Hopefully, we could use the same trick to get out of here alive. Well, as long as it still worked, and as long as the crushing wall didn't get here first.

While the wall moved swiftly toward us, ever so slowly, the slime crossed the last bit of space before it reached us, pushing bit by bit until it sucked us into its body. From there, it started to move into the wall. Looking back, it was nearly on top of us already. Half of the slime made it through before the wall hit it, pushing it the rest of the way through as it closed the tiny remaining gap. Sitting in the last bit of the slime as it was pushed, both walls converged, pressing in on us from both sides.

Just as the last bit moved through, beginning to take us with it, both walls hit us, and white pain drowned out my senses. My eyes moved to my hp bar, whole chunks disappearing within seconds. Closing my eyes, I thought, I did what I could, just let it be enough. Then the pain was gone, and I felt like I was floating. I'd either just died or made it through. Opening my eyes to see which, I looked over to see that my hp bar still had another few percent remaining.

At that point, I let out one really long sigh. Keiko did the same. So, we'd made it through after all. Finally allowing myself to relax after that, the slime slowly moved through the oddly vacant space which linked that crack to some area in the middle of the forest on the first floor. When it moved out the other side of the tunnel, into the woods, both of us looked around. Now that we'd made it out, and come this far, there was just one problem left.

"Now how do we get out of the slime?"


	137. Chapter 129

**Stagnation**** Chapter 129**

Luckily for us, the day ended similarly to the last time we'd been sucked up by this same slime. That is, with a group of new adventurers coming to kill it. Unlike the other time though, they were clearly strong enough to defeat it on their own. Once free, we ignored their gawking and gave a quick thanks while we were already running away.

Back in our inn room in «Friben», the main city on the eighth floor, we both collapsed onto the bed, thoroughly drained from the hectic day. We both lay halfway off on either side, so our heads were next to each other in the middle of the bed. It was hard to believe it was still the same day that the eleventh floor had been cleared. "Ugh," I groaned and rolled over onto my back.

In a daze, we both lay on the bed, until, "Onii-chan?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not sure if we should go for the third orb."

"Why's that?" I lifted my head slightly to look at her, staring straight up at the ceiling at my side.

"The first one was hard, and really scary. The second one... wasn't meant to be beaten. No one _should_ have been able to live through that. Look at this." She opened her menu and switched it over to the stats section. Sliding her finger down the various list of statistics until she found what she was looking for, Keiko turned the window for me to see and pointed at one line in particular. "According to this, our maximum movement speed is 7.55 meters per second(16.8mph). That's already past the limit of human capabilities. Flicking over to a different screen, she pulled up our «Sprint» skill's information. Now at level 233, it increased our maximum speed by 98%. "That's..." probably not being able to do that sort of math in her head, she estimated. "About 15 meters per second(33.5mph). That's way, way beyond impossible. But even running that fast, we couldn't get out of there in time. You get what I mean?"

I nodded slowly. We had heavy AGI builds, with a full fifty points sunk into our speed stat. And we were way above the level of that area. No one would have been able to escape that trap. If that was just for the second orb, what would the third and fourth hold in store?

"I... see your point..." I spoke to the ceiling. "...But what about Ferin?"

"Well, Ferin is just an NPC... Just a bunch of data on a computer..." We both continued to stare off for a minute, before Keiko added the final bit to her thought. "...Right?"

"Well, I guess so... And yet..." only able to translate my confused thoughts into a few words at a time, "aren't we the same?" When Keiko looked at me strangely, I tried to explain what I meant. "It's like, even if we're human, and she's a computer, we're both people. Not like the monsters, which are just reborn over and over. We're unique. Individual. If we died, there wouldn't be any replacement for us. Isn't it the same for her? If she died, wouldn't she also cease to exist, just like us?"

"I... don't know..." I swiped my hand through the air over head and opened up our inventory, retrieving the small crystal Ferin had transformed herself into.

Holding it at arms length above us, "Ferin, can you hear me?" I asked softly. Holding my hand up, I felt Keiko's silky hair brush against my shoulder when she tilted her head slightly.

—?

Eyes widening when I felt the questioning presence touch my thoughts, I then asked, "Just, what are you... exactly?"

—I don't know.

"Then, why do you want us to get your..." though I still wasn't sure just what it was we were actually looking for. Her voice? Her memories? Or was it something more? "A,actually, what is it that we are trying to recover for you?"

—Heart.

"Heart... huh..." Keiko murmured so quietly I could hardly hear.

"And why do you want to get your heart back?" I asked. I wasn't sure what I wanted to get in response, or even what I expected to hear. But... everyone always said machines had no hearts. With one here, saying that it wanted its heart back, what kind of reason would it give for such a thing? A long pause stretched on while I thought these things, Ferin taking a much longer time to respond than before.

—I don't know.

Was it really that simple? She didn't even know why? Come to think of it, I couldn't even tell if that answer was strange or normal. If I was missing my heart, I know that I would want it back, just like anyone. But then, why? For what reason? Could there even be a reason for it? Lying there, I didn't know what to think anymore. I was only fourteen, still in middle school before coming to this world. I'd never considered such deep things before, so I just didn't know what to think now.

"Hey, Ferin. We don't think we're strong enough. Could we maybe... put off finding any more orbs for the time being?" Another long pause, as if she was thinking in that tiny little crystal.

—To recover my heart... I would wait forever.

I slowly pushed the crystal back into my window. I guess that was our answer for now. "Looks like we have a lot of training ahead," I mused.

"Ah." Keiko affirmed with a simple sound.

With that resolution, we spent the next few days as normal. Well, what had become normal for us. That is, running madly through monster infested dungeons while dodging through thousands upon thousands of life-threatening traps. Somehow, it just didn't faze me anymore. Even with my slowly increasing number of brushes with death, the thought of actually dying in here just didn't feel real. I guess you could call it the 'it won't happen to me' syndrome adults always talked about when referring to kids our age. Though I do doubt that they had this kind of situation in mind...

Whatever the case, we tore apart the the floor dungeon, slaughtering the Boss on the twenty-fifth and moving on to the thirteenth floor.

The days passed one by one, and the enmity of the raid group seemed to fade slightly with time, though we both figured we wouldn't ever truly fit in among them. For some reason, they all seemed desperate to escape this world as soon as possible, as if every second counted for a lifetime.

Strangely, Asuna was far from the exception here. In fact, I would go as far as to call her the rule. I had no idea why I never noticed before. While she was nice to us, it was probably just because we were the only other girls around. And she was definitely still holding that info trading with Argo against us. While neither of us could be entirely sure about her reason, the most likely answer was probably the most obvious one: If the raid group appeared to be incompetent, less people would join us. Less people meant slower clear times. Slower clear times meant we'd stay here longer, even if it was just for one day.

The look on Asuna's face whenever we saw her said just that. 'I don't want to be here.' If anything, the steel in her eyes hardened further the longer this ordeal stretched on.

These dreary days passed practically in a blur, until nighttime on the third of April, the same day we cleared the thirteenth floor, when something new happened.

We received a message from Vale. Apparently, he'd finally found a sword to replace the «Mark of Bravery» we had made for him all the way back on the seventh floor. We'd asked him to return the sword when he was done with it, since it was special, and it appeared he would stick to his promise. He said that he would meet us in «Onizumi» at noon.

When that name didn't ring any bells, I pulled open my map and checked around until I found it. Apparently it was a town on the newly opened fourteenth floor, though it was just a random town, not the main town with the «Teleport Gate», or the frontline town closest to the dungeon. It wasn't even near the center of the floor, which had gained a couple otherwise unimportant towns at least a bit of attention in the past. It was all the way to the southeast, practically hanging off the edge of the world it was so far out. So... why there?

I sent a message to Argo, asking about it, but she responded that it would cost fifty thousand Col. Of course, I turned her down, saying I could run there and back in the time it would take for her to type the answer. (We both knew that wasn't quite true. No matter how fast I ran, Argo typed like some sort of demon.)

It certainly was interesting though, and I agreed with Keiko that we would head over there early tomorrow morning. We'd been clearing the frontlines for weeks now, sticking perfectly to our orders from Thinker to help the frontline. One day off wouldn't hurt anything. Besides, we could head over to the dungeon afterward if there turned out not to be anything there in the end.

Rolling over on the familiar bed, we clicked off the light before getting undressed and going to sleep for the night. Lying in the dark, Keiko and I both had similar thoughts.

Finally, something new to break through these boring and stagnant days...

_Author Note: Haha, lots happened in a pretty short chapter! You'll see why with the next one. :3_

_BTW The name of the town, 'Onizumi' is a clue..._


	138. Chapter 130

**100,000 View Special! **

_First off, thank you all for reading my story up to this point. It's been great so far, and there's still quite a ways to go. I hope you'll stick with me to see how it all turns out. ^_^_

_ I put the chapter title at the bottom so I don't ruin the surprise. It's marked with a (1) tag._

Waking up early the following day, we got up and dressed quickly, readying ourselves to go off to this strange town «Onizumi» on the recently opened fourteenth floor. With the floor only being opened yesterday afternoon, there probably hadn't been enough time for anything but scouting out all the new towns and checking out the dungeon entrance puzzle. What could be all the way out there? Maybe I was just overthinking it, and he'd decided to do all the quests in that particular town tomorrow, so it would be convenient to meet there.

Sighing as my thoughts went nowhere, I grabbed the metallic canister as tall as myself which had been leaning against the wall in its usual spot, and swung it easily over my shoulder while sliding my arm through the leather strap running down its length. It was marked with a black ribbon around the top, since we had two «Vendor's Carpets». The black tie held our blacksmithing tools while the blue tie held the Tailoring stuff.

Keiko threw my a questioning look and I explained that we should bring it in case he wanted us to reforge the sword into something stronger. With that, we left our room, ate some plain bread right at the inn, and set off. We had six hours until we were supposed to meet Vale, but this strange town had us interested, so we had to go there, just to find out what was special about it. Well, if there _was_ anything special about it anyway.

After warping up to «Higata», the fourteenth floor's main hub city. The first thing I noticed, as I had yesterday when we arrived after defeating the boss, were the buildings. Unlike everything up to this point, they weren't western styled buildings. Instead, they had slanted, long shingled roofs, some with ornate designs which spoke of China. Even at this early hour, the streets were starting to get really busy, so we hurried through, zig-zagging between the rows of buildings. Instead of the streets heading in the normal cardinal directions like every other town, they all ran diagonally, for some reason neither of us could possibly comprehend.

Swinging between one house and the next wasn't particularly difficult, given that the majority of the crowd was traveling in the same direction as us at the moment. After a number of minutes walking, we passed through an unmistakably Chinese gate which looked a lot like the one in the center of town, functioning as the «Teleport Gate» for this floor. Walking through, it turned out that the crowd we'd been traveling with were also headed this way.

Between the two of us, we both would have preferred to run to our destination, since that would cut the travel time many, many times over. Unfortunately, high stepped land rose on either side of the path with no way conceivable way to ascend. This forced us to simply walk at the relaxed pace of the crowd. Basically, we would get there when we got there.

And it was not by any means a short walk. With «Higata» standing toward the West side of the floor, and «Onizuma» at the very Southeastern edge, I would guess about 8 kilometers(5mi) between the two. Even though everyone was moving at a decent pace, it would still take upward of an hour to get there like this. Though, with no way to do anything about it, we just kept pace and walked like everyone else.

While walking, a new possibility came to mind. Maybe there was a special dungeon near the town. That would be a legitimate reason for Argo to charge fifty thousand Col for information on it. And with so many people going that way, I had no doubt they were headed toward the town, it's not like there would be anything else way off in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the world. However, my idea slowly crumbled when I looked at everyone around us. These people weren't frontliners, people out to find and plunder every special area they could for the best possible gear to ensure their own survival...

The clearing group sounded like a bunch of cutthroat marauders when I thought of them that way, it didn't exactly make me glad to be counted among them...

—I shook my head and returned to my previous train of thought. These people weren't frontliners, a lot of them looked to be from the midlevels. And here and there, I thought I spotted first level gear, maybe even one man wearing the starting gear, a little ways ahead of us. Whatever this was about, it couldn't be combat related, not if people had jumped more than ten floors above their own areas to come. That would be absolutely suicidal.

As with most areas where people were forced to travel on a set path, monsters lay in ambush, waiting to attack. Due to the decreased chance of an attack occurring depending on how many people were on the road, monster ambushes were extremely infrequent, with only two in a half hour or so. Still, it served to prove exactly what I'd been thinking. These people weren't here for combat. The couple times monsters appeared, nearly everyone around us simply hit the ground and covered their heads, waiting for others to fight. They must have clearly known they couldn't fight these enemies, so what were they here for...

Over the long distance, the cliffsides slowly declined, giving way to an open field which allowed the tightly packed crowd to spread out a little more. The whole area had a slight downhill slope, which we descended toward a river. It was a bit hard to make out the details at such a distance, until we moved a little closer. Once we had a better view,(and everyone else was just beginning to see something ahead) I saw that the river was very wide, though it's calm pace kept it from appearing menacing, like the trapped mountain river we'd gone through in the first orb dungeon.

Directly along the slight dirt path which cut through the huge, nearly empty field(a group of mobs or two far in the distance being the only things in sight) was a bridge. It appeared to be well made, wide enough across to hold quite a few people at once. No rickety bridge of death here.

Upon moving closer, the crowd suddenly began to grow much more dense. At first I thought it was caused by a bottleneck at the bridge, but when we stopped moving forward entirely, I realized that there must be more to it than that. Leaning this way and that, I just couldn't see past all of the tall men standing between me and the crossing.

"Come on, this way," Keiko pulled me sideways, off the crowded path and into the open field next to the river. From this angle, we had a perfectly clear view of the bridge. To our surprise, monsters were standing across the wooden structure. They had probably having just spawned there too, because a huge group was walking away from the bridge on the other side. They must have crossed before the mobs appeared. Looking at them, they were orcs, green in color with six in total. They were humanoid class monsters, wielding axes and spears, but overall they didn't look particularly difficult – they weren't even wearing that much armor. After the immediate analysis of the enemies passed through my thoughts, my eyes turned elsewhere.

What drew my attention away from the orcs were the ones standing in front of the bridge. Twelve, maybe thirteen people – real people – stood between the crowd and the bridge, blocking the way. However they didn't look like they were about to kill the orcs and clear the way because they were all facing toward the crowd. They wore bright silver, heavy class armors, between steel and plate, every one of them. Focusing my vision for a moment brought out all their cursors. As I expected, they were all in one guild, indicated by the identical guild emblems which appeared beside their hp bars.

Then one of the men raised his hand and called in a loud voice for everyone to quiet down. After some time, most everyone complied, probably out of confusion, or at least that's what I thought. The man went on in a the same loud voice, though not exactly shouting. "Everyone. There is a toll to cross this bridge. The price is one hundred thousand Col for everyone." That speech hung in the air for a few moments before the a single angry cry rang out.

"What the hell are you talking about? We can cross the bridge whenever we want!"

Though the man's face was hidden under his large, square helmet, I could tell from his tone he was smiling when he asked, "Oh can you now?" Moving slightly to the side, though not quite enough to actually let anyone through, he went on, "You are welcome to try." All eyes traveled to the group of orcs standing on the bridge and no more shouts came from the crowd. "Now, whoever want to pay into the hundred thousand Col, just step forward. Once we have collected the toll, we will gladly clear the bridge." By the end, I could easily hear the laughter in his voice.

Looking at each other, we both agreed internally. Being part of the army meant keeping the peace. That meant, it was obviously our job to stop things like this. We began to move toward the crowd again, from our spot off to the side, but stopped when something else unexpected happened.

From the middle of the crowd, one person leaped without warning, vaulting high into the air and sliding over top of the line of swindlers. Even as all heads turned to follow the movement, the man darted forward in a blur so fast I could hardly follow it myself. The black blur shot to the center of the bridge, engaging all of the orcs at once. Though when the green monsters turned to face their assailant, numerous flashes of bright light effects shot in every direction. Even as the orcs hp began to decrease and they pressed in on the single person, the booming effect of powerful Sword Skills echoed in every direction.

Maybe seven seconds passed, hardly three attack thrown by the orcs before they all shattered into polygons and floated away on the morning breeze. Finally stopping for a moment, the blurred black figure revealed himself to be Kirito, of all people! He swung his sword in a wide flourish, down to his right side before swishing it up cleanly into the sheath strapped across his back. Then, he simply started walking away.

"H,hey! You think you'll get away with that bast- uwaa!" The apparent leader of these idiots started to shout, only to be pushed from behind by the enormous crowd. Now that there were no monsters, everyone pushed toward the bridge without hesitation. No matter how strong these armored guys were, they couldn't hold back hundreds of people pushing against them. In the end, they either scattered into the crowd or simple got ran over as everyone crossed the river.

Mixing in with the crowd ourselves, we both sighed with relief. We hadn't had to get involved with breaking up their stupid plan after all. Looking around as I shuffled along, I couldn't help but wonder how this bridge could hold so many people at once. It looked pretty sturdy, but I doubt anything would really be designed to hold so much weight all at once. Maybe it was just an «Immortal Object», so it would never break.

Whatever the case, the wooden structure successfully got everyone to the other side, where a high cliff split the path in two, and we all swung into a wide right turn. Having crossed the river, which actually dominated a large portion of this floor, we now had to turn more South to reach our destination. The road traveled under the cliff face on the left, still with a field of grass to the right, stretching off to the river even as we moved farther away from it.

A short distance farther South, a second rise came up on the right side, enclosing the path again. Started growing atop both cliffs, their leaves hanging over and casting a shadow over the path. The air cooled down as we walked, a foresty dampness hanging all around. Everything smelled green, like earth and plantlife. This wasn't just a forest, it was more of a jungle.

As we moved into the shade and cool, the yammering voices of the many, many parties around us quieted, a kind of automatic response to moving into such a natural area. With their lowered voices, I could actually make out what some of the ones around me were talking about. To my surprise, a lot of them were discussing what happened back at the bridge. It seemed that everyone knew «The Beater Kirito» now, though I think I heard someone use a new title – «The Black Swordsmen»? If that's what they said, I'd never heard it before. Well, at least it fit better than his other title.

In general though, their conversations certainly were not kind. While a couple mentioned that he _did_ clear the way for us, saving us a hundred thousand Col, most insisted that he just wanted the high level mob farm for himself. I sighed, leaning back with both hands crossed behind my head and looking up into the thick forest canopy overhead. "Y'know, he was probably just killing the mobs in his way so he could keep going..."

"Yeah, pretty much." In the middle of her speaking, something caught my eye. Overhead, shadows flickered along the high plateaus. While squinting slightly to try and get a better look, I felt Keiko glance at me when she noticed my focus shift elsewhere.

—It must be an ambush. When I realized this, we both tensed slightly. High cliffs were dangerous ambush spots because they usually allowed mobs to land an attack before anyone even saw them coming. Some of the people here were extremely underleveled for this area. A single hit would mean certain death.

We kept walking for a minute with our eyes pointed up. On both sides, the cliffs fell back from the path a little, turning the straight walls into slanted surfaces. While they were still far too steep to climb, they would allow someone to run down, or get a foothold while falling from above. If an ambush was coming, it would be here.

A number of dark figures flew out above the path. Three within our area general area.

"Keiko!"

"Yeah!"

My eyes widened, red cursors appearing above them while I drew the sword at my waist, flicking it into position to charge «Flash Draw». At the same time, I shrugged off the «Vendor's Carpet» canister on my shoulder. The Sword Skill charged up and they fell toward the crowd slowly, almost frozen, as I examined the one closest to me, almost directly overhead.

Human, medium armor covering vitals only, no armor anywhere else. What it had was colored in a brown-red, like samurai armor. It fit its name, 『Wooden Samurai』. A katana, held in its hand and glowing heavily, turning slightly as it descended – the opening for the powerful Sword Skill «Tsumujiguruma», or 'whirling wheel'. A three hundred sixty degree spinning attack with range much longer than the weapon used in the attack.

According to Kirito, back when I'd finally asked just how Diabel had died, the first floor boss had used the attack on the front line fighters during the first floor raid, stunning them so that it could deliver the fatal combo attack against blue-haired raid leader.

My grip tightened and a surge of power flowed up from my blade. That instant, when the charging attack became most powerful, I kicked away from the ground, high into the air to intercept the samurai monster.

Swinging my sword into its side, I disrupted its attack and sent it barreling into the cliff on the right hand side of the path to send a a cloud of dirt and debris up all around it. The recoil from the attack also sent me flying back, to plant my feet against the sloped side across from the monster. In the moment before I kicked off again, I glanced sideways to see Keiko engaging the second in midair, and another cautious AGI type leaping up to block the third, farther down the path.

Firing away from the slanted wall, I drew my dagger and stabbed it straight forward. Though the quickly clearing screen of dust, my «Linear» stabbed directly into the neck of the samurai for a high damage critical hit. However, before I could retract my arm, a terrible pain shot out through my stomach. "Guh," I grunted as it ran me through with its katana. Even so, an attack like that, not even a Sword Skill, wasn't going to do much in this world. Gritting my teeth, I pulled back my dagger, watching its hp drop a little below the halfway point.

Drawing back its own blade, it flicked around, a light effect whipping overhead as it swung the katana skill «Muchiutsu», or 'whip' at me from the right. The attack was roughly equivalent to a «Horizontal», maybe shifted upward a bit. Leaning backward, I couldn't dodge in midair, so I braced my own sword against my shoulder, only managing to block a little bit of the attack before it cut straight into my chest. When the heavy force blasted me backward, I kicked my right leg up, catching the monster between the legs and hooking my foot there to pull it away from the cliff.

As soon as we started falling, I heard screams below and could only hope that everyone was clearing a space for me to fight at ground level. Forcing all of my down to flip over backward, I exerted strength into my leg, swinging it up to kick the monster over top of me in midair. Twisting around awkwardly, I flailed for a moment to turn upright, bringing my sword up to my shoulder.

"Ha!" Shouting out, I struck down with a strong «Blitz». It was an attack similar to «Vertical», but much more powerful. Unfortunately the range was extremely short and it took a moment to charge, making it easy to block and usually not very useful. Here however, the samurai was turned halfway upside down and despite its best efforts to turn in midair, I crushed its weak parry and cut deep into its shoulder. Its thick shoulder guard blocked some of the damage, but I still took a good bit out of its remaining hp.

With my strong attack connecting, the monster was blasted down at a tremendous speed, crashing with a huge dust cloud near the left side of the path. Dropping down myself, I hit the ground hard from the long fall, rolling to mitigate jolt of pain that shot up my legs when I landed. Rolling immediately back to my feet, I was already running forward, my sword raised high as I threw a basic «Slant», countering its own slash as it moved out of the obscuring dust. I threw another slash, upward this time, to parry an overhead attack, then saw it flick its wrist backward.

Faster than my eyes could follow, the samurai whipped its katana up over its head to activate «Muchiutsu», the action it was named for. But I didn't have to see it, because I already knew what move it was going to make. Ducking the upper half of my body, I pulled my dagger across in front of me while the horizontal slash flew overhead. Striking out during the tiny delay that followed its Sword Skill, my blade flashed across its durable leather armor, cutting into its hp just a little more. Continuing the attack, I turned backward, stabbing my dagger backward from point blank to finish the «Edge Thrust» attack.

A booming sound effect followed my attack, indicating a successful combo, but still no sound of shattering glass. Continuing the spin, I caught one look at the next incoming attack and brought my blade overhead. There wasn't much strength in my stance, so just I glanced my blade off the downward strike to alter the attack's trajectory while stepping sideways around the left side of the samurai.

As soon as it finished the move, I raised my sword to shoulder height, slashing in two motions, right then left with «Horizontal Arc» to finish off the enemy. As it shattered, polygons of light scattering away in the wind, I let out a pent of breath and turned to watch Keiko finish off her enemy with a flurry of attacks so fast the samurai couldn't even respond. Dashing off of the wall, she flew over to where the third one was barely being contained by the other guy. She caught it in the back, her powerful skills dealing critical hits to the surprised enemy and finishing it instantly.

Meanwhile, I was looking all along the ground. Where did I drop the «Vendor's Carpet»? "Hey, did anyone see where I dropped my «Vendor's Carpet»?" I asked the crowd. For a few seconds there was nothing...—Then a shout came from somewhere in the packed crowd.

"Oi, let go of me! Damn you!" Breaking from the crowd, five guys were all grabbing one, who clutched a long metal canister to his chest defensively. Judging by their looks, they were all between level five and fifteen, with generally balanced builds. "This is **mine** damn it!" I glanced upward. Glaring at him, I pointed to the black tie around the top that said it was our blacksmithing set. Looking up to the top, far above his head, he saw the identifying mark, then looked back down at me, his face going completely pale. It was only then that I realized I was pointing with the sword still clutched in my hand.

"Ah, sorry. I would never threaten anyone with violence," I apologized automatically. Even if he was the one at fault here, threatening someone with a weapon was unforgivable. I sheathed both my blades before approaching, grabbing the metal canister and pulling it from his death grip with one hand. I slid the strap over my shoulder, allowing myself to relax after the battle. Reminding myself that _technically_ I was a support class, made especially apparent since I had a «Vendor's Carpet» on me, I said, "You can just let him go."

After only a brief hesitation, they released the thief, who promptly disappeared into the crowd, shouting curses back now that he was free. "Here, take this as thanks." I spoke while swiping my menu open with my left hand. It seemed that a couple people noticed, since they were watching so closely, but I tried not to let it bother me. They wouldn't remember me soon anyway... hopefully... maybe...

Shaking off that thought, I did a quick bit of math and pulled twenty thousand Col from my inventory, having it appear in a little bag in front of me. I tossed it to the guy farthest to the right, then repeated, giving twenty thousand to each of the five men.

"W,woah! Is this really alright?" The first one asked when he checked the contents. Glancing at the others and probably doing the math himself, he exclaimed, "But you could buy another one with this much, with Col to spare!"

"Haha, it's not a problem," I chuckled, waving off his concern. "That's only a fraction of the worth of everything in here, patting the metal tube. I wasn't kidding either. The furnace, the anvil, our smithing hammers, all the materials... It could easily add up to well over four hundred thousand Col. At least we carried all of our rare and unique materials within our own inventory, so we would still have those... But losing this carpet, the cost to replace everything would be enormous.

"I see..." It was right about then that Keiko landed next to me, having returned from killing the third samurai monster.

She'd picked up the whole situation through our bond, so even as everyone stared in wonder as my twin appeared, she bowed. "Thank you for recovering our smithing tools." Speechless, they all looked back and forth between us, their mouths opening and closing repeatedly. With her head bowed like it was, they couldn't see her grinning.

Now that the conversation had pretty much ended, I glanced to the huge mob of people staring at us, beginning to feel self-conscious with all the eyes on me. "Well, let's get going before we get left behind," I said loudly, snapping everyone out of their 'stare at beautiful girls' moment. Together with Keiko, I started to rush forward at a jogging pace, not wanting to attract any more unwanted attention by actually running. They were only a hundred meters or so ahead, moving slowly, and were catching up quickly enough, the whole group behind now moving to catch _us_.

On either side, a couple of the guys that had helped me out ran up, running to keep pace with our jog. I didn't think we were _that_ fast... When we slowed just a little bit, the guys eased up quite noticeably. We kept that pace until we made it to the back of the previous group, everyone else coming in soon after to reform into one huge train.

"Hey, those kimonos are beautiful. Where did you get them?" one of the guys asked once we'd slowed down enough for him to speak. I think he'd been the second from the left of the five, with a round helmet on his head. He had a guild mark next to his hp as well, though I didn't recognize the symbol. "Wait no!" His voice suddenly dropping a little deeper, "—That was rude of me. My name is Crimson, what are your names?"

Stifling a giggle, we responded, "Rai and Rei," both of us pointing to the one whose name we were giving.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I would like to ask where you got those beautiful kimonos." Despite his attempt at gallant speech, he was clearly the same age as us, so it was more funny than anything. Still, I wasn't about to laugh at him when he was trying so hard, so I answered, truthfully.

"We made them."

After gaping for a second, he realized that it didn't fit the 'Mr Cool' act he was trying and snapped his mouth shut, a slight blush escaping under the visor of his helmet. When I thought he was going to stammer something out, he cleared his throat. I raised an eyebrow, that was a good move actually, better than most guys managed. "Earlier, didn't you say you were blacksmiths? Or, at least that that was blacksmith equipment?"

With his guess suddenly coming near our special ability, (which we'd been keeping secret since finding out that Kayaba Akihiko himself had given it to us for some reason) it was now our turn to go on the defensive. Keeping my cool, I answered "Yeah, she's the blacksmith, I'm the tailor."

"Is that so... That sounds convenient," he nodded.

"It is," Keiko agreed.

"So, why are you coming with blacksmith stuff anyway?" Crimson tilted his head as he asked.

"Believe it or not, we got called here today by someone we made a special sword for a while ago. We wanted to have our equipment in case he wants us to upgrade it." Keiko scratched the back of her head.

"Wow, that's... awesome actually." We both nodded enthusiastically. "Wait wait wait, so let me get this straight. You're a tailor," pointing to me, "and you're a blacksmith," swinging his finger over to Keiko, "_and_ you're both strong enough to fight monsters on this new floor?" Since managing all of those things should be impossible, we couldn't really explain it away. So we went with the most basic response. Smile and nod. In reality, it was all thanks to the «Blessed Twins» skill... Well, that and Keiko's ludicrous luck, but still...

"Oh man, some people can just do it all... But I guess I don't get to say that, since I spent the first couple months hiding in the «Starting City» until the army helped me level to the safety zone..." sighing loudly after that. "And after everything I went through to get this game too," shaking his head. "And I just hid, scared to death that those stupid boars would kill me... Seriously, what was I thinking? Those things were pathetic..."

"Hehehe..." I couldn't help but chuckle awkwardly when him talking about the first floor boars. "You have better luck than me then. Our first encounter with the boars was absolutely terrifying."

"How so?" He asked, a reasonable question for anyone who hadn't accidentally triggered a fight with a Field Boss as their first opponent in this world.

"How to explain it..." I muttered. "Basically, the very first boar we attacked transformed into a giant field boss that nearly killed everyone. Hehehe..." laughing awkwardly at the end as his jaw dropped. "Really, it was barely surviving a bunch of stuff just like that that got us to where we are. Thankfully, we finally have a decent safety net with our levels so we don't have to worry so much."

"I see," he nodded along. Then he suddenly snapped forward. "Aha! We're finally here!" a huge grin spreading over what was visible of his face. Only now, I realized that I'd been so drawn into our conversation that I hadn't noticed the changes in the area around us at all. Looking back, the cliffs on either side had slowly dropped lower, eventually flattening and coming all the way to ground level, a dense forest on all sides. In the fifty meters or so behind us, the slightly winding path traveled through an area where the wooden trees gave way to bamboo. It was a bamboo forest!

Turning ahead again, I finally found out where we were headed. With the bamboo forest suddenly clearing before us, there stood a number of low, wide buildings. Pure, traditional Japanese buildings. Directly ahead, there stood a large gate with a sign, clearly reading 『Onizumi』. However, below that where two kanji symbols, 『温泉』. While much of the menu had kanji, everything in this world had been Western, and usually written in English up until now. Now, looking at the kanji for the town name, I finally understood where we were going, not to mention why there were so many other people here as well.

**(1)**

The path spread out as it entered the clearing, and we all walked in, looking around in wonder. We were so far toward the end of this floor that if I looked up, I could see the sun, much higher in the sky than was normally possible to see. It was because the floors slowly decreased in size, that being so far out, we were slightly past the end of the floor above us. Strangely, even though the sun was up and visible, the whole area was somehow covered over in a deep shade, from all the plants maybe? That said, it gave off a cool, nighttime vibe, even though it was still morning. Looking to either side, it seemed that this town occupied the area between two of the pillars which ringed each floor. It had clearly been made large enough to hold this many people. Kayaba probably expected this the first time it was discovered.

With such a large area, the congestion all along the path here vanished. The long walk had taken about an hour and a half, making it a little before 8:00 in the morning now. There were people around everywhere, but it didn't feel crowded. I noticed that a lot of them were actually wearing light yukatas(2). They must sell them around here somewhere, I thought while looking around for an NPC. I didn't see one, but did notice that a few people here and there wore just a towel.

"So, I guess he asked us to come here because he was coming here for the day, like everyone else" Keiko caught my attention, but I had to think for a moment to remember who she was talking about.

"Oh yeah, that makes sense now that I think about it. That, and why Argo-san would be charging so much Col for information on this place. It really looks like the news passed around fast." With nothing else to do, we started walking, just wandering around the area and seeing what was here.

Soon I saw that there were small buildings here and there, probably leading to changing rooms, probably each one with an onsen on the other side. It made sense, considering that this place had to hold so many people. Obviously everyone wouldn't fit in a single bath. As we kept walking, the paths split in all directions, going between one onsen and the next. We just kept walking up the one road we were on. Looking all around I saw one or two areas with a drape over the entrance. They were red and marked, (also in kanji) 『Women』. So there were some areas separated for women as well, it seemed. Farther, I spotted a couple areas with a similar curtain marked for men.

Ahh, so there were men and woman's baths, but the vast majority were mixed, probably just because nearly everyone was male to begin with. Besides the small buildings for changing, some of the baths just had a gate to walk through, with the onsen right on the other side. Although, none that I saw were marked to separate men and women.

Nearing the very edge of the floor, a many of the diverging roads connected in a single plaza. This would obviously be the town center... even though it was nowhere near the center of the town. I shrugged it off as we entered the area. Here, it was much more crowded, with many people all centered around a number of places throughout the area. Moving around, we managed to get a look at what they were gathering on. NPCs, probably the ones that sold the towels and yukatas.

"Since we're already here... shall we?" Keiko asked with a wink.

I gave a leisurely shrug, "Can't see why not." We walked to the closest NPC, eventually managing to push close enough to initiate a conversation, in order to bring up the shop window. The only items listed were the yukatas, towels, and slippers. They weren't even that expensive. Even if we were already wearing kimonos, we bought two yukatas anyway There wasn't really a reason not to. Then a pair of towels and slippers as well.

We swapped our regular shoes for the slippers immediately, only now realizing that it probably wasn't right to walk around in combat gear in such an area. To that effect, we also removed our weapons, though we kept our kimonos on. Even if they were useable in combat, they were still appropriate here. Well, that and we didn't want to get changed out in public.

Moving toward the center of the plaza, now that we were looking past the crowds of people, I noticed three big doors, left right and middle, spread out wide around the circular plaza. Left was marked for men, right for women, and the middle wasn't marked at all.

"They must be, like, the really big baths I guess?" Keiko's head swiveled around to look at the three entrances. I nodded slowly. Walking over to the right, we entered the woman's area for now. I wasn't surprised to see that it was empty. It didn't have a changing room, I guess that wouldn't be necessary, as there is no need to put clothes anywhere. Actually, it didn't have anywhere to wash your self before entering the bath either. But again, we didn't get dirty in this world, so that really wasn't necessary either, was it? Instead, there was a long stretch of open floor between the entrance and the rocks leading down into the wide bathing area. We both approached the pool of water, looking all around.

Even though onsen's weren't uncommon in Japan, it was like going to an alien planet here in Aincrad. Everything looked so different for some reason. Walking around the onsen, we skimmed between the water and the far right hand wall, moving until we reached the far end. Standing there, we both stared in wonder, and also partially horror. Past the rocks at the far end of the pool, there was nothing. The rocks holding the water in the pool were the last barrier at the edge of the floor before you fell out of the world. This bath was _literally_ hanging off the edge of the world.

Then again, sitting all the way at the edge allowed it the absolute best view available in this world. As far past the next floor as you could possibly be here, My guess was that we'd be able to see the sun all the way until noon, maybe 1:00 pm even, when usually, it would be out of sight halfway through the morning hours. That, and the view of the sky was unlike anything I'd ever seen before... Well, only sort of. There was that one time when we'd actually fallen out of the sky outside the world. Of course, I hadn't had much time to take in the scenery, since we were fighting a giant dragon... thing, and a bunch of insect-like monstrosities which were completely invulnerable to all attacks.

Whatever the case! Shaking my head to clear it of those thoughts, I turned to look across from the pool of water from where we were, toward the mixed bath. To my surprise, the onsen turned, going under a hanging banner, marked with the same 『Women』 sign as the one outside. Moving around the pool, (on the side that wouldn't have us falling out of the world) we made our way over to the curtain, which fell to almost exactly the height of the floor next to the bath. It was split into a number of panels, so I shifted one sideways slightly to peer though.

On the other side there were many men all lying out, lounging in the hot water and relaxing. Moving my hand away, I allowed the panel to shift back into place. "So... I perfectly normal onsen. In this world."

"Can't say I ever expected that," Keiko voiced my next thought, agreeing with it completely.

"Huuaaauuuhhh," I released a long sigh. "That's all well and good, but what do we do now?" Keiko shifted her weight backward, putting a hand up to her chin and thinking aloud.

"Yeah, I came expecting it to be something crazy that would take a bunch of time. But like this... we have what? Three, four hours to kill?" At that moment, a swish caused us both to turn around, looking toward the entrance from the plaza.

Running into the wide open area before the onsen, there was a little girl. She had bright blond hair tied into big pigtails and a towel wrapped around herself. However, we hardly noticed those things.

Because we were staring at the dragon sitting on her head. Yes, a dragon. A tiny blue dragon which was lying there as if asleep. "Uwwaa! It's so big and aahh!" she shouted the last bit as her running suddenly knocked the little dragon from atop her head, falling forward so she had to throw her arms out and catch it, staggering and barely keeping herself upright in the process. "Pina! Geez!" she puffed her cheeks out.

"wuiiyyaaaaa" was the little feathered monst– not a monster, I reminded myself– thing's only response as it flailed around in her arms, causing her to shout more. Well, if it wasn't a monster what was it? Focusing on it, a slightly off-green cursor appeared, tinted just a bit more yellow than a person's cursor. Definitely not a monster.

"It must be a familiar," Keiko noted.

"Oh!" I gasped, remembering way, way back when this all started. Actually, it was related to that craziness with the huge boar field boss we'd been talking about with that guy earlier. At the time, Keiko had tamed a bunch of boars by feeding them apples in order to get them to help with the fight. Actually, that was the only reason we'd survived at all, I remembered.

"So, she tamed a small dragon..." I mumbled. That was really impressive. "I wonder where she found it, I've never seen that type of mob before." Keiko nodded along. Besides the dragon, the other strange thing I noticed was her age. Even younger than us, she had hardly even hit puberty. Maybe twelve years old, though she looked even younger with her hair tied up like that, not to mention the complete lack of curves, visible because she was only wearing her towel.

As we watched the little dragon taming girl, she finally looked up from the struggling dragon and noticed us. "Ah!" she exclaimed when she did, suddenly looking around to find that we really were the only people here. Quickly hurrying forward, she slipped into the water, removing her towel as she went. Unfortunately, as soon as the little dragon touched the water, it freaked out, thrashing all around and spraying water in every direction.

"Pina! Kyaa! Stop! What are you- iyaaa!" Watching this, we couldn't help but giggle. The dragon thrashed all over the place while the girl desperately attempted to keep hold of it as it, failing badly and causing it to flip all over the place so she was basically juggling it while flailing this way and that in the onsen.

Finally, it flipped just the right way and their faces met with an audible 'crack'. They both fell backward into the water, a few seconds later, the little girl erupting back up to the surface. "Pina!" she shouted angrily. Looking at it floating in the water, "Pina?" and finally, "Pina!" this time as she grabbed the little dragon and ran over to the edge of the onsen with it. Gently setting it on the rocks at the side of the pool, it flopped on its side. "Don't die! Not when we just met!" the girl cried, tears beginning to form in her eyes.

"Uuyaaa." the little dragon squawked, flicking one of its two feathers which took the place of a tail.

"Are you ok?"

"Waaa..." it gurgled, shaking itself a bit. Opening her menu, Keiko pulled out one of the towels we bought and approached the pair at the edge of the bath.

"Hey, can I try to help?" Looking up with teary eyes, the little nodded emphatically. Leaning down, Keiko took the towel and gently wiped down the little dragon.

"Yaaaa!" the dragon squeaked happily.

"Hah, it looks like it was just a bit waterlogged," Keiko explained. "Looks like it doesn't like water."

The little girl started to smile, more tears welling in her eyes, until she launched her self out of the bath. "Thank you!" she shouted, grabbing Keiko with a flying tackle so they both fell over backward. _Crack_. Smacking her head against the rock floor, Keiko's eyes practically turned into big swirls. "Oh my god I'm sorry!" the little girl shouted.

"Hehenoproblemnoproblem," Keiko waved her arm as if to wave it off while slurring all her words together. Walking over, I helped my sister back to her feet, hooking an arm around her back to hold her upright while the little girl stayed kneeling where they had fallen.

"I am very sorry, and thank you for your help," the little girl said very formally, bowing her head low to the ground.

Unable to keep from blushing at the sudden show of respect, I waved my hands frantically while saying, "It's no problem, really! Actually, I think she needs so air, so we'll see you later sometime. Enjoy your bath."

Looking back up from the ground, she wore a huge smile while she nodded and replied with a simple, "Nn!" While I started lead the woozy Keiko outside, she called after us, "Thank you Onee-chans!" Hearing that, I wasn't sure if I was happy to hear the thanks, or sad to hear myself called an 'onee-chan'. "Uwaa! Cold!" came a sudden shout, followed by a loud splash, shortly before we walked through the curtain and back into the plaza.

Once outside, we sat down against the side of the building next to the doorway and I let out a long breath. That was... interesting. I guess. As I thought this, Keiko suddenly started shivering.

"Cold..." she muttered. Leaning over, I finally got a look at her front.

"Oh my god, your clothes are soaked!" While there were pools of steaming hot water all around, that didn't help much to heat the air here, where it had hardly changed to spring. Taking her hand, I opened her menu and turned it to face me. "I know!" Since I was doing this in the middle of the street, I couldn't just strip her and change her clothes. To start, I removed the obi and its various accessories. Then came the sopping wet kimono. She still wore her nagajuban, and while it wasn't exactly outerwear, her bra and panties were covered at least. Swapping the fancy kimono with the simple yellow yukata we'd bought, I finally removed the nagajuban. The yukata wasn't particularly thick, but as long as it wasn't wet it would do fine.

Keiko let out a relieved breath and I felt warmth returning to her. "So much better," she sighed. While we continued sitting there for a minute, a yellow message indicator suddenly appeared in front of me. Opening up the message, the first thing I saw was that Thinker had sent it. That was a surprise. The even bigger surprise was the body of the message itself.

『Did you go to』

『Onizumi today?』

Without even thinking about it, I responded 'yes'. A few seconds passed while I waited for him to write out whatever he wanted to talk about. Surely if he was asking something about this particular city, it had to be important, right? The next message I received asked, of all things, where I was in the city. Even though I was confused by that, I told him where we were, in the plaza in front of the woman's bath.

『Just a minute.』

What was that supposed to mean? Was he sending someone to meet us? Was he here himself? I Looked all around for some time, before one figure separated from the crowd, followed by a second. Amidst the crowd, I only noticed them because they were running. Turning our way, I saw that the two people were Thinker and Yulier. They cut to a stop right in front of us, both panting heavily.

Not even waiting to catch his breath, "We just... found out... from Argo...mobs keep ambushing... the players on... the path." Then he took one deep breath. "Can you go and help them?" He finally paused for a few seconds to breath a little, before going on. "I sent messages to MTD members to come guard the low level players on their way here, but it will take time for them to assemble. You two are the closest, can you help out for now?"

"Yeah, of course." I responded immediately. I hadn't thought much of it earlier, was it that bad? But if there were people in danger and we could help, then we would. I grabbed Thinker's extended hand, I pulled myself easily up to my feet, then pulled up Keiko as well.

"You ok now?" I asked.

"Yeah, all better," she nodded strongly.

"Then we'll be go-"

"Wait a second. We're going too, we'll help you out as best we can until reinforcements arrive."

I nodded, "Then let's get to it." As we all started running back toward the edge of town, Keiko swiped open her menu and threw all her regular clothes back on. At this point it seemed like changing took precedence over people seeing her. Besides, we were running anyway, what could they even see?

When she followed her clothes with weapons, it reminded me that I'd removed mine as well. I equipped my sword and dagger too, placing a hand on each hilt and squeezing momentarily.

It took some time to reach the path out of town, not because we had to fight through a crowd this time, but because Thinker and Yulier ran nowhere near as fast as we did, a little more than half probably, it took some time to pass the edge of town. A short distance down the path, just a little bit outside of the bamboo forest and into the regular temperate forest, we found the same place the three samurai had appeared earlier. It really wasn't hard to tell, since there more samurai monsters here right now.

There was wide area of clear space, with three samurai being held off from the rest of the crowd by three people. Far down the path, my keen vision allowed me to see what each looked like, so I could clearly see that they were courageous and strong, but far too low level to hold those enemies off for much longer.

Fortunately that didn't matter, because as soon as we caught the monsters from behind, they fell in an instant, without any chance for retalliation. From that point, we stood along the sides of the path, slaying the monsters whenever they reappeared. After the third attack, we managed to figure out that they respawned every ten minutes since the last time they were beaten. Once we had that figured out, we kept an eye on the time and forcibly cleared the area where they would attack shortly before they appeared, making it much safer and easier to take them down.

During our breaks between battles, I couldn't help but consider that despite any complaints Thinker had against the name, The Army really fit the guild. I mean really. A kind of special event occurs, and here we were, protecting everyone on their way there. Apart from that, it was a surprise to see Thinker fighting. Well, more that just that he was fighting, but that he was fighting _well_. I'd honestly never seen him go outside the «Black Iron Castle» since the guild formed, and most of the time he hardly seemed to leave his office. When did he find the time to train anyway?

Over the couple hours, more and more members of the army arrived, until Thinker finally came to us and said we could go now, they could definitely handle it themselves. When we asked why, he just grinned and said that we weren't even on duty today. Well, that was true... but could they really handle these guys without us? The 『Wooden Samurai』 was a pretty strong monster, even for us. And then I looked to my right, down the path leading away from the Onsen area.

It looked like a silver-gray sea. So many army members... they must have numbered in the hundreds... I turned right back to Thinker and accepted his release. "We're counting on you. Just message us if something else goes wrong and we'll meet you in no time." He gave a little nod and we turned away, slowly walking down the path back toward «Onizuma».

When we arrived in town again, it looked like everyone had calmed down since the early morning when most everyone arrived. There was still a decent stream of people coming behind us, but nothing like this crazy crowd we were in. Walking down the street, it seemed that _everyone_ had changed into a yukata. While we were still technically dressed appropriately, we stood out a whole lot more in these kimonos than we even would in a regular town, since people wore all sorts of crazy armor normally. Now with everyone dressed similarly, we quickly attracted a large flock of people, all asking where we'd gotten our outfits.

With the sudden crush of people around us, all asking questions at once, we fled into the closest woman's changing room we could find. Chasing after us, they all slammed into an invisible barrier at the doorway, falling backward in a heap as the curtain swung closed behind us. We collapsed in the little room, more exhausted by the crowd than fighting mobs for hours. After a moment, movement registered in my peripheral and I turned to look.

Standing naked with her hand hovering slightly above a system menu which was invisible to my eyes, stood one of the heads of the clearing group, Asuna.

"Th,th,this isn't w,w,what it l,looks like!" Her entire face turning a deep maroon color as she sputtered out words. She squeezed her eyes shut and declared, "I just have a thing for baths!"

"..."

"Wait no! I didn't mean that!" the girl flailed her arms around frantically, turning back and forth in place. At this point, steam was starting to float up off of her face. Much more of this and she might actually pass out from overheat... "What I meant to say was..." she floundered for a moment. While she was fighting to find some sort of reason, I noticed that this Asuna looked a whole lot younger and cuter than the scary, cloaked, violent raid leader Asuna that seemed to glare at everything- all the time. "I, I was actually just taking a short break here. I was about to get back to clearing the next dungeon right after this!"

"The next dungeon isn't open yet," Keiko pointed out, possibly just to egg Asuna on.

Well, it worked, because Asuna only managed a faint, "Eehhhhhh..." her eyes turning to swirls and her head rolling slightly to the side. Giggling at the strange look on the usually razor sharp commander, we quickly changed clothes.

"Well then, enjoy your bath. Don't worry, this will be our secret, just between us girls." Keiko smiled, drawing Asuna out of her overloaded state.

"...Thank...you..." she mumbled, looking down a little bit and blushing.

"No problem." Just as we began to step toward the exit, Keiko inhaled a quick breath- she'd just gotten an idea. "Hey, we're heading over to the large Onsen. Want to come with us? The view is much, much better than this little enclosed one." She couldn't be more right about that. The other, with its gorgeous sky-view couldn't be compared to this little one with just a number of tall rocks to form the sides. Not to mention that Asuna actually gone in yet, easy to tell because she was still dry.

"I don't know if I could..." Asuna continued mumbling, her posture slowly sinking as she clasped her wrists in each hand, wringing them slightly. Moving forward, Keiko put an arm around her shoulders, which I only now noticed were actually really thin and frail looking. In fact, Asuna herself looked like a cute, fragile doll which might break at any moment. What a change from her normal deadly disposition. I guess she really did just 'have a thing for baths'.

While I thought these strange thoughts, Keiko managed to convince Asuna to put on a yukata and started to lead her toward the door out. Taking up position behind the two, I let Keiko handle her and just followed. Somehow, she managed to keep Asuna calm the entire way to the plaza, where we walked up to the large curtain for the woman's onsen.

Only then did the embarrassed girl suddenly stop, saying she couldn't do it after all. "What's wrong, it's just an onsen, just like in Japan.

"But, but... It's different somehow..."

"Don't worry, it'll be ok..." Keiko urged her on, gently rubbing her hand across Asuna's back, between the shoulders. From behind, I'm pretty sure I saw an 'ethics code violation' message appear in front of Asuna, but it seemed that she didn't notice it. Slowly, she shuffled forward, lifting the curtain and moving inside. Once we all passed through, we swapped our yukatas for towels before moving forward again.

Now looking ahead, my mouth nearly dropped open. Unlike earlier when it had been completely empty, inside the bath area, there were more woman than I had seen since coming to this world. Eyes scanning across, I counted about fifty-four. I might have been a bit off because some were moving around, but still! After counting the woman, I got a weird, nagging feeling, like I was forgetting something, though I didn't know what.

The three of us walked over to the water's edge, slowly dipping a foot into the water to test the temperature. A gentle, bubbling warmth flowed all the way up my leg from where it touched the water.

"Aahhhh..." we all sighed together. Moving forward, we removed our towels and slowly slid down into the warm water. On reflex, I shrugged off the «Vendor's Carpet» and set it right behind me as I lowered myself into the water. Leaning my head back with my eyes closed, I just soaked in the feeling for a minute. It was strange, something told me it felt different from it had back on Earth, but I hadn't felt a bath in so long I honestly couldn't recall what the difference could possibly be.

Lifting my head back up from the rocky side, I slowly gazed around, yawning. The nice warm water was already making me sleepy, even though I'd only been up for a few hours. It wasn't even noon yet-

Noon? Snapping awake again, I lifted my hand and swiped the main menu open. "Whoo," I let out the audible sigh when I saw that it was only 11:52. Wait, that still meant that we had to go meet Vale soon didn't it? Waving the menu away, I slid a little lower into the water, so it came all the way up to my chin. Oh man, and we just got here too... I grumbled internally.

Like a lightbulb going off in my head, I looked up and blinked. That's what I was forgetting. All at once, everything emptied from my mind except for a single train of thought. I was in the woman's bath. There were naked woman. Everywhere.

I stopped for a moment, waiting for the crazy embarrassment and the freakout that would come with it. My heart beat faster. Sitting there, blushing a little, I blinked a couple times. What was wrong? Even though I was sitting right in the middle of a scene that would make most men pass out from sheer joy, I just didn't feel anything like that. Sure, as I guy I knew they looked good, but was that it? There was no way that could be the reaction of a normal, healthy male. While one part of me was wondering this, another part pointed out the basic question: why should I feel anything?

Well that was obvious. Because I'm a guy! I shouted in my head.

Oh yeah? Then look down, my other half responded. Slowly gazing down into the water, I couldn't really see myself in the water, but I thought, why would a girl be embarrassed in a girl's bath?

Suddenly standing up, my two companions looked over at me. Shaking away the stupid conversation I'd been having with myself, I searched for some excuse. "Hey, I'm going to get some air and cool off a bit. The meeting with Vale is coming up soon, don't be late," I said the last part to Keiko carefully so she would make sure to take note of it. "I'll leave this with you," patting the rolled up carpet, "just call me if you need me." Keiko nodded and I turned on a heel, walking for the exit. Even while walking, I quickly used a towel to dry myself before putting my yukata back on and exiting the bathing area.

As soon as I walked into the wide plaza however, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I just knew I couldn't take a bath in there, with all those woman around. Even if my body told me it was normal, it just wasn't! "Then, how about the mixed bath?" I wondered, speaking under my breath as I walked over to the one gate without a curtain. Turning, I hesitated for a moment before walking though and switching again to a wrapped towel.

Approaching the pool of water, my eyes slowly traveled around. They were... all men... As if by magic, they all looked over at me at the same time. Faces brightening and eyes lighting up on every one of them- The next thing I knew, I was outside the gate again, panting even though I wasn't out of breath. "Oh god, that scared me..." I mumbled and collapsed, sliding to the ground against the gate, near the entryway. "There's no problem bathing with men," I told myself stubbornly, "just... not when they look at me like that..." I moved my hands up, pressing them slowly to my cheeks. They were hot, blushing. What was wrong with me?

"_This_," referring to my female body, "must have already affected me more than I realized..." I mumbled to myself. And now that I was thinking about it, just how long ago had I abandoned speaking like a guy anyway?(3) I couldn't help but chuckle – I couldn't even remember. "It just happened I at some point I guess."

After a minute of sitting and leaning my head against the gate, I pushed myself back up to my feet. If I stayed here much longer, Keiko would come out to meet Vale, and I just didn't feel like I could face her right now. Not like this. With only that in mind, I stood up and walked out of the plaza. I didn't have any sort of destination in mind, so I just walked between various onsens for a couple minutes. Since neither of us were in combat gear, I would be able to move a full three hundred eighty meters away from Keiko before our Strength fell to below zero and I wouldn't be able to carry my own weight. Estimating, that area would probably cover a little less than half of the town, so I wouldn't really need to worry about it.

Still, it's not like I had anywhere to go in particular... As I thought that, the voice of a girl to my left caught my attention. Looking over, I found five people standing nearby, underneath the gate leading to a small mixed onsen.

"Come on Sachi, you can bathe with us no problem." These words were said by a rather long haired blond boy who was slouched far over, an arm ringed around around the shoulders of a short girl with pure black hair. With this in front of me, I automatically started to move forward, but something made me stop after just a single step.

"No way, that's way too embarrassing," she shook her head a number of times and the four guys all started laughing. After her saying that, the one with short brown hair thumped the blond guy on the back twice with a chuckle.

"Come on Ducker, let's go in, it's cold out here." After the blond turned and darted away to join the others, he reached down and ruffled the girl, Sachi's hair, causing her to cross her arms and stick her tongue out at him. Turning halfway around, he said, "We'll message you later when we're going to go, Sachi."

Switching from the defiant look, a small smile appeared on her face as she gave a little wave and said to have a nice time.

"Oi, hurry up or we're going in without you Keita!" the voice of one of the other young men came from inside the onsen.

"Coming!" he shouted back, jogging through the gate. Standing there, I saw Sachi begin walking away. Looking back, all of the guys took off their towels as they were about to get into the onsen. Unable to control myself, I felt my face go totally red and spun to look in the other direction.

Even while I was telling myself I was being stupid and I had no reason to be embarrassed, I ran around the corner and away from that place.

When I stopped again, I leaned against the rocks enclosing another small bath, panting more from the heat in my face than being at all out of breath. Still, I hadn't been paying any attention to where I was going and had no idea where I was now. A quick glance upward fixed that, since wherever I was, I could orient myself based on where the edge of the floor was. But still, what was wrong with me today? I had to get my act together, acting like such a girl... just ridiculous!

I grit my teeth, huffing angrily at this whole situation and started walking again. Not twelve steps farther, I picked up a familiar voice. Did _everyone_ come here today or what? Looking around the corner to get a look at the front side of the onsen I'd just been leaning against, I saw quite a few guys all in the basic yukatas sold here. Based on the voice I'd just heard, I focused to bring up their cursors.

I knew the guild symbol they all had. The «Fuurinkazan», Klein's guild. "See you later, don't soak too long!" one of them said while they all waved.

"Ah!" came a reply from the voice I knew. After everyone walked off, I rounded the corner and leaned past the gate to peek into the onsen. Sitting alone inside with his back to me, a man with spiked up orange hair and a bright red bandana. Klein! Looking at him from behind, I couldn't help the grin that spread across my face.

I took two quick steps, then suddenly tried to stop, bouncing on one foot and barely keeping my balance without shouting out. Ducking back behind the wall again, I let out a relieved sigh. "Woops, towel,"(4) looking to make sure there was no one around, I took my towel off and turned into the small onsen again.

Taking two quick steps, I leaped forward, shouting "Surprise!" sending my arms out and tackling Klein from behind. Both crashing into the water with a huge splash, it occurred to me that splashing around like this was worse than forgetting to take off your towel. Oh well, too late now.

Coming up to the surface with my arms still clinging around Klein's neck, I was already laughing. I Pushed way from him in the water and he spun around while shouting, "Am I dream-" before cutting off. He stared at me while I waved with a big grin across my face. Then, he fell face first into the water. He floated there for a few seconds...

"Klein?" I asked, confused. "Are you ok?" After I asked that, bubbles started floating up around Klein's head in the water.

"Of course I'm not ok!" I yelled, firing up out of the water like some sort of flying fish. Grabbing my neck with both hands, he continued shouting "You broke all my dreams!"

Shaking me back and forth, I stammered out, "I... don't... understand..." totally dizzy from all the shaking.

"I've always dreamed of having a beautiful girl come into a bath with me! Then when I finally think it's happening, it's just you!" He dropped his hands from my throat and fell to his knees, crying out in a very over dramatic way, "Why me?!" with tears streaming down his face.

"Yeah yeah poor you..." I grumbled. A little knot of anger formed in my chest, though I had no idea why.

"Wait, now that I think about it, you and your sister are identical twins aren't you?" Klein said, his big tears having stopped. With a small grunt, he picked himself up off his knees. "Then... if I just pretend its your sister..." an evil gleam appearing in his eyes.

Jumping backward, I threw my hands up to cover myself. "D,don't look at me while thinking about my sister!" I yelled, shaking my head and blushing badly.

"Ah?" that small noise froze us both to the spot. Turning out heads at the same time toward the onsen entrance, we found a person stopped there, mouth half open, eyes wide.

Kirito?!

"I'll... just... go..." whatever the rest of that thought was, he didn't even say it as he slowly turned to leave.

"This isn't what it looks like!" we both screamed, leaping from the onsen and both tackling Kirito from behind.

"No! I'll just pretend I didn't see anything!" he started shouting as we forcibly dragged him backward.

"I'm telling you you've got it all wrong!" my whole face going red.

…

"So, that's how it is." After calming Kirito down, I'd explained my peculiar circumstances. Well, the 'being in a girl's body' part anyway. No way was I going to tell anyone about the rest of the stuff that had happened to us.

"Well..." Kirito said slowly, his face turned far sideways and upward to look away from me. "Klein, I know you'll believe just about anything a pretty girl says... but this one actually convinced you she's not a girl?" Looking down, he eyed me warily and I automatically covered myself again, shrinking away a bit.

"Believe me, Kirito, Rei is definitely a guy." Klein earnestly.

"It's not that I don't want to believe you... It's just, there's no way to prove something like that."

"That's... understandable," I said slowly. "Besides, it doesn't really matter anyway, since it looks like I'll wind up being a girl by the time this is over anyway," shaking my head sadly.

"What do you mean?"

Klein chimed in to answer that. "You heard how it's bad to spend too much time in a body of the wrong gender? They were talking about that before SAO came out?"

"Yeah, they were starting up some tests, but they hadn't really gotten that much good evidence yet."

"Well, I'd make some pretty good evidence by now..." I chuckled as I spoke, because of how terribly true it was. "I mean, just look at me. Here I am with two other guys, who I've already told I'm a guy, and I _still feel embarrassed_." I shook my head again. "Really, why am I covering myself?" though I didn't move my arms, even as I said that. "This is a fake body anyway. I shouldn't I care who sees me... And yet... I do."

"Well, I'm hardly one to give advice." Kirito put his hands up, "so I'll just believe you for now. I can't see a reason not to, and you seem honest enough," with a shrug of his shoulders. "For now, let's just relax and enjoy the onsen. If it's that bad for you right now, maybe some 'guy time' will help." He smiled, and I nodded.

Dropping the previous conversation, we all sat along the sides, sinking lower into the water and letting it warm us up, since we'd all done a decent bit of standing in the cold air during that mess.

"Oh! Check it out, there's a new issue of the «Weekly Argo»," Kirito said suddenly. He pulled a newspaper from his inventory and we both slid over to get a look while he continued, "They were published just a little earlier and there's an information NPC here who sells them." Across the top of the paper, I read the big headline: 『Onsen town found on the newly opened fourteenth floor!』 After selling the information for fifty thousand Col yesterday, she must have figured that everyone had spread the word and decided to post it in her newspaper. Of the smaller articles lower down, the one that stuck out to me was a piece mentioning how The Army had come to guard the route to the onsens so all the lower levels could get through.

"Wow, she must have written this up a few minutes ago or something. This stuff practically just happened," I pointed to the article I'd noticed and Kirito nodded.

"Yeah, I was coming to show Klein right after I bought it. Check this out though, they added some more names to the list of 'players with bad manners'." While it didn't sound like much, getting put on that list was a really bad thing. It was more like a blacklist than anything, noting the people who were disruptive and caused trouble for others. Usually, they were high level frontliners who went back to lower level areas and massacred hoards of monsters, leaving none for the people who actually needed them to train.

Argo had created the list about three weeks ago, by popular demand. It seemed that because the experience provided by mobs didn't increase that much between floors, while the difficulty grew by leaps and bounds, a number of people had just decided to slaughter all the lower level mobs to increase their efficiency. This created problems with there not being enough mobs, and a lot of people started complaining to the higher level guilds to keep people in line. In the end, this 'bad manners' list was created, naming people who were causing problems.

Anyone who paid attention to the paper would keep those names in mind, most refusing to trade goods with the people on the list. Basically, it made their lives a lot harder. Considering how much trouble we'd caused all over the place, I guess it was a lucky thing no one was ever around or both Keiko and I would probably be on that list by now.

"Besides that, look at this one here," pointing to one part near the middle of the page. 『Experience Requirements Increase; Leveling Slows』 it read. "Looks like after level thirty, the exp required for advancement skyrockets."

"So, I guess we passed the 'new player' area?" Klein asked and Kirito nodded. It hadn't happened in quite some time, but as I listened, I had no idea what they were talking about.

"What's the 'new player' area?" I asked.

"Well, it basically refers to the section of a game where things are easier and rewards are given faster, to draw new players in. Looks like that went up to level thirty in this game. From now on, things are going to get a lot harder."

"Ah..." I mumbled. Well, at least that explained one thing. In the last few weeks, we had hardly leveled up at all. We had only barely made it to level thirty-two in the last couple days before coming to this floor. It had started taking way longer than before to level up, so this must be the reason. At least at level thirty-two, we had gotten our fourth skill slots, though neither of them were filled in yet.

"Yeah, I thought so," Klein said, "I was sure the requirement was higher than it should be when I looked at it."

"The bigger problem is that there's no sign of an increase in mob exp yet," Kirito pointed out. "That's probably what drove so many people to start hunting on the lower levels."

We went on like that for some time, talking over various news articles while we bathed. It was nice, just getting to relax and hang out with guys for a change. Hopefully it would be enough to keep me sane for a little while longer. By the time Kirito got up and excused himself, saying he had other appointments to keep today, I no longer felt like I had to cover myself in front of him, the way I did when he first came in. That was an improvement at least.

"Yeah, I guess I should get back to the guild myself," the two guys got out, and said their goodbyes before leaving.

Walking out of the onsen myself, I gave a long yawn. "Wow, that was nice. And... it helped. I guess I should get back to Keiko now." Stretching upward for a few seconds, I felt like I was nice and loose all over after soaking in the nice hot water. No more stressed, tense muscles. I put my yukata and walked out into the street. Following the bond, I made my way back to the plaza, and into the woman's bath. Feeling my heart rate pick up as soon as I entered, I averted my eyes and didn't look at anyone directly. There, Keiko was sitting with her head back, half-asleep. She had Asuna to one side, and that girl Sachi I'd seen earlier on the other, in the exact same state. Glancing over, that little dragon tamer was still around, though she was nowhere near as relaxed. A group of woman were gathered around her, all talking at once, a number of them touching her dragon, grabbing it, poking it, trying to pick it up even. The feathered dragon did not look very happy about it either.

Turning an ear toward their conversation, it sounded like they were asking her how to tame those dragons. Now that I thought about it, Kirito had pointed out a rumor in the paper about a rare type of dragon being tamed just yesterday. The little girl had tamed the dragon just the day before? That would explain why it wasn't particularly cooperative yet. I was about to conclude that as long as they didn't cause a scene, the little girl should be ok, she got up out of the onsen, picked up her little dragon, holding it close to her chest, and marched out of the room. "Guess she didn't like the crowd pestering her..."

Turning back to what I was doing, I crouched down and tapped Keiko on the shoulder, waking her from her light sleep. She smiled up at me and turned in place to face me. "Come on, let's search around for some food." She nodded, her eyes still a bit glazed over by sleep, and grabbed my hand so I could pull her up out of the bath. While she dried herself off with a towel, I picked up the «Vendor's Carpet» and slung it over my shoulder. We left the onsen, going back into the town and wandering around for some time before finally coming across one place different from the rest. It was a single story building, quite long, but not very deep. We opened the traditional sliding door and entered.

Inside, there were lots of people, but it somehow stayed quiet. Many booths were lined up along the front and back wall, so we walked down a little ways to find an empty table and sat down. Unlike most places, the tables were sunken below normal height, with the floor at our feet below regular floor level, and the top of the table not very high above it.

We ordered whatever the special was, and the server showed up with something I didn't even recognize. It must have been some obscure traditional food not really eaten nowadays. With it came some tea. Shrugging, we dug in. Finding that the food was actually quite tasty, we ate it all, then sat and just sipped the tea for a little while. During that time, Keiko explained that when she met Vale, he'd given back the sword, saying he didn't want it reforged, that he would rather move on with his own strength. Some time later, we left the restaurant again.

Having done everything we came here for today, it was time to head back. Fortunately, making our way back out of town was much easier than coming in. There were army members stationed all along the path to guard from threats, all the way back to «Higata». Even if they weren't all that strong, there were just so many of them that I wasn't surprised they'd been able to guard the path all day.

Having come from that nice, relaxing experience, neither of us wanted to run. So we just walked nice and easy back to the other town. It wasn't even that late by the time we made it back, but the day was already over for us after all that.

_Author Note: It was long wait but... worth it? ^_^_

_And: New longest chapter. XP_

(1) That lead in was a whole lot longer than I thought it would be. XP

**The Onsen Chapter**** Chapter 130**

(Note, onsen means hotspring)

_Author Note: Yes, it's exactly as the title implies. As thanks for 100,000 views, this chapter is the written equivalent of The Onsen Episode(I'm going to write 'onsen' instead of writing 'hotspring' because I like the word better.) Unlike the Christmas special, this will be totally in canon –as you can obviously see already– since there's no random break from the storyline like in the Christmas Special._

_About the hint I gave in the last chapter – Onsen is written ( __温泉__);__ the second kanji, 'sen' can also be read 'izumi' (kanji are weird like that). So I swapped them out. (Probably totally changes the meaning, but I don't know much about kanji myself yet, so... yeah.) That's how it became 'Onizumi'_

_But enough of this crazy long A/N. Enjoy!_

(2) Like a light kimono – less fancy/decorative

(3)Men and women speak differently in Japanese. Like boys using the personal pronoun 'boku' and such. Just look up 'Gender differences in spoken Japanese' on wikipedia. They explain it better.

(4)You aren't supposed to go into an onsen with a towel on because it can dirty the water. The only exception I can think of are the one or two mixed ones, where younger women will wear a towel to cover themselves. I'm not sure how 'correct' it is (for them to wear a towel), but that's all I really about that. – Since I don't want to add another note: In an onsen, you're supposed to be calm and quiet. Not supposed to be rowdy or splash around.


	139. Cheatsheet 8

_I did some editting in the last chapter to try to smooth out Rei's realization, at least a little bit._ _Also, I renamed the 11th floor main city Taft, because that was actually in the canon._

_Oh yeah, also, keep an eye out for the next chapter. It's going to be... interesting... possibly._

########

—

«»

『』

########

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

March 8 – Wednesday Tenth Floor Clear

March 18 – Saturday Eleventh Floor Clear

March 25 – Saturday Twelfth Floor Clear

April 3 – Monday Thirteenth Floor Clear

########

exp 1999300

col 1887850

########

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

########

One-handed Sword 282

Sp: 800834

Sprint 261

Sp: 686500

Battle Healing 256

Sp: 664000

Sp: -

Dagger 283

Sp: 804494

Metal Working 243

Sp: 595500

Metal Refining 256

Sp: 660000

Tailoring 225

Sp: 512520

Cloth Refining 146

Sp: 216000

Sp: -

Martial Arts 2

Sp: 103

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

########

# E Note

Nagajuban 2 2 Goes under kimono – silver

Twilight Kimono 2 2 Purple at top, fades to pink at bottom – high defensive stats

Aurora Obi 2 2 Blue with aurora and star patterns – high defensive stats

Hashi(Ties) 4 4 Keep the kimono in on and in place – white

Obiage 2 2 Scarf-like decoration for obi – silver

Obijime 2 2 String decoration for obi – white

Veiled Wayfinder 2 2 10S 10D – mainly black

Harmonious Convoy 2 2 10S 5D – mainly white/gray

Woodland Arrow 86 0 Arrows fired by 7th floor boss

A bunch of rare mats xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

Red Orb 1 0 Red orb from floor 1- first orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Yellow Orb 1 0 Yellow orb from floor 2- second orb to unlock Ferin's cave

blessed twins shard of power I 75

50% full

########

Level chart

30 120000 1740000-1860000

31 1 125000 1860000-1985000

32= 2 131000 1985000-2116000

33 3 138000 216000-2254000

34 5 147000 2254000-2401000

35 8 159000 2401000-2560000

36 13 176000 2560000-2736000

37 21 201000 2736000-2937000

38 34 239000 2937000-3176000

39 55 298000 3176000-3474000

40 89 391000 3474000-3865000

########

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

########

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

########

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

Sliding Dash – charge type – fast slide forward ~5 meters – thrust attack

Blitz – short range, high power downward slash from the shoulder

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

Rebound – defensive skill – 3hit- upward slant, horizontal, downward slant – very fast w/ short delay

########

Town Names to Remember:

Starting City – 1 hub

Horunka – 1

Tolbana – 1 frontline

Urbus – 2 hub

Serof – 3 hub

Reu – 5 hub

Pala – 6 hub

Regg – 6 frontline

Finreo – 7 hub

Maren – 7

Friben – 8 hub

Cetiose – 10 hub

Sythum – 10 frontline

Taft – 11 hub

Higata – 14 hub

Onizumi – 14

########

-Special Equipment Forged-

«Veiled Wayfinder» – Rei&Rai – 3rd floor

«Harmonious Convoy – Rei& Rai – 3rd floor

«Sunbeam» – Asuna – 6th floor

«Mark of Bravery» – Vale – 7th floor

«Twilight Kimono» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor

«Aurora Obi» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor

########

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four is in the deepest pit of the darkest cavern. You must travel to the land of Earth. Through the Southern mountains, descend into the endless ravine. You must continue to fall, all the way to the bottom. Only there will you find 『The Master of Earth』. Defeat it to claim the second orb. But beware, descending into the caverns is the easy part. They will fight to keep what they have claimed.』

-3-

?

-4-

?


	140. Chapter 131

**Change**** Chapter 131**

After not really doing much for the rest of the day, the bell tower's tolling said it was now night. With nothing else to do, we made our way back to our inn room on the eighth floor and set in for the night. It was a pretty early bedtime for us, but it's not like we were going to do anything else at this point anyway, so we just lay down and went to sleep.

At some point, I realized I was awake again. Sitting up in bed, I rubbed a hand lightly across one closed eyelid while opening my menu. It was a little after 1:00 am. Yawning, I lay down again to go back to sleep. However, thoughts about the day before started to pop into my head. More than anything, how I'd realized how accustomed to being a girl I'd become.

Thinking back on it now, that realization was way more jarring than it probably should have been, but that was my own fault. To keep from thinking about it, I was always doing something. Clearing floors, working on quests, training skills, it was always something. I'd looked at Asuna, trying to clear SAO as fast as possible and thought it was odd how she pushed herself so hard... but I was doing the same thing really.

Keiko had never really said anything about it, she had usually let me make the decisions. But that's because I was the older brother, right? It was my job to be the strong one, right? I'd decided that I would protect Keiko. It's not like turning into a girl would change right? No, I wouldn't allow anything to change that. It was my promise as a man and I would keep it. Even if I... stopped being a man...

I let out a long sigh, staring at the ceiling. How was I going to go back to sleep like this? I'd always filled my head so completely with whatever I was doing, I'd never really looked around me. Hell, it took soaking in an onsen to clear my head enough to realize the situation I was in. Until that point, seeing that little dragon tamer naked, even Asuna naked, I hadn't even noticed. It slid right past without me so much as batting an eyelash. How many other things had happened that I'd totally ignored without realizing it?

Then there was Keiko. What did she think about all this? Did she even notice? I'd been so preoccupied with keeping myself preoccupied, that I hadn't even noticed if she noticed. If she'd seen what was happening to me this whole time, why didn't she say anything? Or rather, was there anything she could say? Or had she tried, only to be ignored?

With all these questions bouncing around in my head, I grabbed my hair, rubbing my hands back and forth across the top of my head in frustration. "I'm never going to get any sleep like this!" I slid out of bed, toward the door out of the small inn room. But I didn't reach for the door. Once there, I turned around and walked back to the window across the room, next to the bed on Keiko's side. As I paced the length of the room, more tangled thoughts bombarded me.

If I hadn't been so focused on always doing something, would be have gone to those life-threatening dungeons when we didn't have something else to do? We easily could have died both of those times, it was a complete miracle we hadn't. If I hadn't been like that, we might not have gone into those situations unprepared, without a plan. I shook my head, I couldn't blame that on myself. No, there's no way we could have planned for stuff like that. It wasn't like the floor bosses. Those dungeons obviously weren't meant to be cleared.

"Still, always moving without thinking has gotten us into trouble. And it will only get worse from now on." I said, staring out the window, over the low wooden houses near the inn, and into the deeply shaded forests beyond the edge of town. The monsters had been getting stronger and stronger. Even against regular enemies, like those samurai, we didn't escape without injury most of the time. The only reason we were ok fighting up here was because of Keiko. Her luck with weapon creation and monster drops had allowed us to get the high level equipment we needed to survive up here. Well, that and Kayaba Akihiko rewriting our character data, which allowed us to get a high level «Battle Healing» skill without training it.

But in the end, what had _I_ done to contribute to our survival? All I did was just keep us rushing forward without time to stop and think about where we were going. Because if I stopped, I wouldn't be able to avoid thinking about my body. This couldn't continue, I would get us killed if I kept on like I had been. Given the circumstances, the only other option besides continuing like I had been, was to just accept it.

But... could I just accept it? Could I really accept being a girl now? After spending the first fourteen years of my life as a male, could I really just say, 'ok, I'm a girl now' and have that be it? Could such a thing be allowed? "I... don't see why not..." I mumbled at the ceiling. Walking over to the wall next to my side of the bed, I grabbed the full length mirror against the wall and picked it up.

Even if I made this decision, how would I explain it to Keiko? How would she react when she found out her older brother wasn't even a boy anymore? Setting the mirror down leaning against the door, I took a number of steps back. Whether or not she approved, this wasn't her decision. I had to change, before everything fell apart. I couldn't let my own selfish stubbornness endanger my sister's life, even if it meant I could no longer be her big brother.

In the mirror, I saw my reflection back-lit by the pale, ambient glow of moonlight through the window behind me. Opening my equipment menu, I looked at the button next to my current equipment. Since I had nothing on, it read, 『Remove all underwear』. I squeezed my eyes shut, and extended my finger. The light tinkling of bells preceded a feeling of cool air against my previously covered skin.

Slowly squinting my eyes open, I saw my own image appear before me again. Finally, I really opened my eyes and looked at myself – really looked at myself – for the first time. Skin, tinted ghostly pale by the moonlight. Gentle curves, though not entirely developed yet, formed my figure. It wasn't so obvious when I had clothes on. I gently, carefully slid a hand along my skin, down my side to feel my curves. These were mine. Of my own body.

Looking back up to view myself in the mirror again, I noticed how I didn't have any body hair. It was probably just because the system couldn't process all that for everyone... "but here too..." touching two fingers to my clear skin slightly above my groin.

Realizing where I was touching, I snapped my hand back like I'd been bitten. Then I floundered for a moment, a deep blush crossing my entire face. Bringing my eyes back up, I glanced at the large breasts I hadn't really been looking at.

As I'd noticed a couple times before, they felt heavier when I wasn't wearing a bra. I hopped in place, both watching and feeling them bounce with the motion. Lifting my right hand, I took one finger and slowly reached up. After a brief hesitation, I poking my finger into the side of the soft mound. "Uuuu," I let out a low sound, feeling the skin on my face grow hot once more.

"If you're going to do it, at least do it right."

I froze. Every single part of me froze when I heard Keiko's voice come from behind. In the mirror, I saw her sit up in bed and slide across, over my side and out from under the covers behind me.

"Keiko, this isn't what it looks like," was what I was trying to say, but the first "Ke" was all that would pass my lips, stuttered indefinitely. Still unable to move, I stared into the mirror, watching her approach from behind.

It only took her a few steps before she reached me. And of all the things she could have done then... She hugged me. Putting her arms over my shoulders, she squeezed me tightly, but gently. She held like that for a minute before speaking.

"You didn't honestly think I wouldn't notice anything that happened to you yesterday, did you?" her words whispered into my ear, a mix of hurt and acceptance. "Not to mention the rest of the time."

"B,but... You never gave any sign..."

"I'm not as easy to read as you, and you never looked very deep."

"Ah..." After a few seconds of silence, Keiko moved again.

"Now as I was saying, if you're going to do it, at least do it properly." With that, she took my hands which hand dropped to my sides, holding them around the wrists. Picking them up, she said, "Like this," and placed them on top of my breasts.

"Ahhh!" I started to cry, my whole face going red. This was weird!

However, Keiko quickly shushed me. "If you're really deciding to be a girl, you have to be able to touch yourself. You have to be comfortable in your own body, and you can't say that if you aren't even comfortable touching it."

When she spoke like that, I just couldn't stand up to her... I let that sink in for a few moments, then gulped. "Nn," I nodded.

"Then..." still holding my hands, she gently slid them down my breasts, off the top, then up from underneath and slid my palms off lightly again. Pressing my palms directly across the center, she said, "squeeze just a little now." I did as she said, feeling my fingers sink into my supple chest. They were really squishy, my fingers could almost disappear in them. Still, touching them like this felt strange. I just wasn't sure how to explain the feeling.

"Don't worry about that," Keiko responded to my thoughts. "It's just that girl's breasts are sensitive and you aren't used to the feeling yet." Releasing my hands, she let them drop to my sides again. Then she took me by the shoulders and turned me around to face her. "You should also get comfortable down here," not giving an indication since it was obvious what part she was referring to, "but that will probably take some time, since we don't have to go to the bathroom or wash ourselves in this world," shrugging. "Still, keep that in mind."

Taking my hand, she guided me over to the bed, where we sat across from each other. "Now... is there anything you want to ask?"

After a few seconds of jumbled nonsense tumbling through my mind, I managed to form a decent question. "So, why did you never say anything before?"

A soft smile crossing her face as she looked down, "It's just, it was a decision for you to make for yourself. I didn't want to push you one way or the other, it had to be up to you."

"But, even if I decide to be a girl now... what happens when SAO is clear and we go back?"

To that, she shook her head slowly. "That's still a long, long way off. We'll deal with it when it happens. For now, it's important that you don't have a mental breakdown from all the pressure," she said the last part with a chuckle. Though, it was true enough. If things had gone on like they had, I might not have been able to hold out too much longer.

I thought for a minute. "Are you disappointed in me? I was supposed to be the strong older brother who could protect you, but it looks like I can't do it anymore."

Shaking her head slowly once more, she answered, "That's not true at all. Even if you're a girl now, you're still just as strong as you were before. We'll both keep fighting and protecting each other, just like we have been." She took a slow breath. "But... that's not quite what you were thinking, was it?" A little hesitation, then I nodded. "More like: 'protect you from being afraid and...' stuff, right?" As she said, it wasn't something I could really put into words. It was just that older brother feeling. I couldn't feel it so much anymore, but it was still there, at least a little.

Smiling a little, I asked, "When did you get so strong? So... dependable?"

"Hehehe..." she giggled and scratched the back of her head. "I guess it's easier to see the change in others, because like you, I don't know. It just kind of happened."

"Is that so..." I thought for a minute more, a faint smile playing across my lips. But for now, those were all the questions that I could think of. So, I asked, "What now?"

Keiko put a hand up to her temple, thinking aloud. "I would like to say 'go back to sleep' but... there's one other thing we definitely have to address before we move on."

"What's that?"

"We have to decide what we'll call each other from now on." When I had a look like I had no idea what she was talking about, she tagged on, "O-nii-cha-n."

"Oh..." I muttered, looking down when she called me that now.

"With the way things are now... You should call me 'Onee-chan'."

"Ehh?! T,there's no way I could... Besides, I,I'm older!"

To that, Keiko slowly shook her head. "As a boy, you were only a few seconds older than me. As a girl, I'm much, much older than you," she pointed out. When she said it like that... I lowered my head.

Blushing more and more every second, I slowly made my lips form the words. "O...nee...-chan"

"Once more..." she urged me on gently.

"Onee...-chan..." I looked up a bit, only for my eyes to meet a large pair of breasts, just a moment before Keiko threw her arms around my head to give me a big hug.

"Hehe, sorry. It's just, I've always... secretly kind of wanted a little sister..." she giggled awkwardly.

"Ah..." I really didn't have the first clue how to respond to that. Especially since _I_ was the little sister now. Still... it felt... nice, somehow. Like I had someone to rely on now. Someone who could protect me. It was weird. I was always the one trying to protect her, but now she was protecting me. Still... Even so! Even if I was the younger one now, I would definitely still protect her! While I came to that resolution, Keiko- no, Onee-chan... I blushed again thinking that. She had just started thinking aloud, wondering what she should call me.

"I obviously can't just call you Eiji(1) now, considering the circumstances... I don't suppose you have a girl name you want to be called, do you?" Hearing that made my eyes go wide and my whole face go red. I shook my head so fast that my hair flew all over the place. "Hehe, don't worry about it," she patted my head and I calmed down. What was this feeling?

"I guess there's no helping it. I'll just call you by your character name. Rei?" Looking back up, I gave a small nod. "Even if things have changed between us, we're still siblings. We'll always be there for each other, just remember that. Tomorrow, I'll show you that I can be the reliable big sister!" She gave a big grin and I couldn't help but smile sheepishly.

"I... I'm counting on you... O... Onee-chan..." It was going to take some time to get used to this. But for now... it was good, right?

"What a good little sister!" she squealed, grabbing me and rubbing her face into my cleavage happily.

"O,Onee-chan stop it! I'm still naked! That feels weird!"

Pulling her face away, she smiled. "Don't worry, that's called 'feeling like a girl' and you'll get used to it eventually." She gently rubbed the top of my head.

It felt good.

_Author Note: Well... I'm still not sure how much of that I'd originally planned on happening here. Keiko kind of decided that she didn't want to be in the supporting role in their relationship anymore I guess. _ _

_The character progression here was ok, right? Not too far out of left field?_

(1)Eiji is his real name, in case you forgot.


	141. Chapter 132

**Kurenai**** Chapter 132**

On the surface, the following day was... well, normal. Following the events of last night, it was actually kind of disconcerting just how normal it was. It was almost like I expected everything to be different. Though on the other hand, everything _was_ different. Kind of. The thing is, nothing around us had changed, we were the ones who were different.

To start the day off, we dropped down to the first floor to visit Thinker, who had a new mission for us. When we arrived at his office, he told us we'd be helping out in the mid levels. It wasn't anything hard really, just rushing some guys through some small dungeon areas on the sixth floor. We weren't even supposed to worry about the exp distribution, our goal was the special loot chests at the end of the dungeons.

With that, he gave the info we needed on the party we'd be going with and excused us. Though, he stopped us for a moment just as we were leaving, noting that something seemed different about us today. I couldn't help but profusely deny his comment, receiving an amused head-tilt from the guild leader before Kei- Onee-chan pulled me out of the room.

Following his orders, we warped up to the sixth floor town «Pala» before heading out to a small village, «Shaen», on the West side of the floor. It was a grasslands area with only some rolling hills, so it was easy to run there, even if the monster population on the floor was rather high. Even so, we were quite early, so we dropped our pace to a simple walk when the little wooden roofs came into sight over top of a hill. The town was still far in the distance, so it gave us a some time to talk.

At first, we didn't really sit on any particular topic, just kind of skirting around what was on each of our minds, (even though we could _read_ each other's minds) until Onee-chan finally let out a long sigh. "Aww man, I said I would show you I could be a strong older sister today, but there isn't really much for me to do... I guess there's no helping that though, orders are orders," giving a big shrug.

"No no, that's fine by me. I'm not exactly feeling up for too much excitement today..." It felt like I couldn't handle much today, since I was still trying to come to grips with everything that had changed in such a short time. It may not have been that obvious to others, since there didn't seem to be any difference in the way we were treating each other, but I still felt it somehow.

"Don't worry, the monsters here probably can't even hurt you. Just fight like you always have and we'll cut right through them," she said in answer to my previous thought, lightly patting my head. Again, I had that feeling I didn't recognize. The same one I got every time she patted me like that. Did she feel this way when I'd patted her as an older brother? It felt really good, really reassuring, like everything would be ok.

"That's feeling is called 'being protected'. It feels really nice, right?" She smiled warmly.

When she said it like that... "Stop reading my thoughts, it's embarrassing," I changed the subject, looking away to hide my red cheeks.

"Sorry~" she giggled, "it's just that you've been too embarrassed to ask about these things out loud. There's still a whole lot you don't know about being a girl. If you don't ask any questions, you won't learn, so I might have to pry a bit to explain things." Slowly, I nodded.

Apart from myself, realizing one strange new emotion after another, the biggest change had to be Onee-chan's tone of voice. Before, it had always been rather neutral, just her regular voice. On the other hand, it now sounded much stronger, more commanding. And yet, so much more gentle whenever she was speaking directly to me, like right now. Almost like a mother's voice, just a little different. Then... an older sister's voice probably.

For the time being, Onee-chan put off talking about girl stuff I needed to learn. According to her, I would learn it all when it was time to learn. Though I wasn't really sure, it basically sounded like she would cover things when they came up, instead of just lecturing away. And for that I was glad, since I probably wouldn't remember most of it that way.

So without really saying much more, we walked the last of the distance to «Shaen», arriving shortly before the designated meeting time. Although, unlike usual, the members we were supposed to meet were already there. To my surprise, one of them already had their name tagged. 『Crimson』. Hadn't we met him yesterday on the road to «Onizuma»? He was in the army? I'd totally missed that before...

Onee-chan let out a short giggle, scratching her head. Apparently she hadn't noticed it either. Besides Crimson, who was probably about our age under that heavy armor, the other two were obviously older. Well, it was mostly obvious because they were just _so_ much taller than us. They were lighter armor, one carrying a curved sword at his waist, the other a mace slung across his back. Glancing back, I saw that Crimson was a two-handed sword user.

We approached the group, who seemed to be involved in some discussion we couldn't hear over the regular early morning din, waving to get their attention when we came close.

We both spoke together. "Hi, we're from the army," but I stopped halfway through 'hi.' I was too busy staring at Crimson. He was standing a few paces away, his visor flipped up because we were in town. I could see his face.

"Ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya..." My brain was totally overloaded. Why did the world hate me? Standing there like that, with steam starting to rise from my face, nothing more would come out of my mouth.

"Ah, excuse us one moment!" Onee-chan exclaimed right before she grabbed me. In the next instant, the scene before me changed, finally releasing the words caught in my throat.

"Yamada-kun!?" I blinked. He wasn't standing in front of me now. Onee-chan had used «Flash» to move us into one of the adjacent streets. That boy... he was...

"Saaafffeee~" Onee-chan let out with a long sigh. "You know, it would have been bad if you'd said that in front of him," she said with a scolding voice. At that point, I felt my knees go weak and slid to the ground.

He was the one who tipped me off about Sword Art Online so I got the game. The reason we had come here in the first place. He was also the reason why we had logged in late. The reason... that I'd been given a female avatar.

I felt tears forming at the edges of my eyes, spilling over when I whispered, "Why?"

"Aaahh! I didn't really mean it like that, I wasn't trying to be mean or anything!" Onee-chan waved her arms frantically when she saw me start to cry. It took her a moment to pick up the real reason, at which point she stopped, knelt down, and put her arms around my trembling shoulders.

"It's not fair, why, at a time like this? If I'd met him any other time, even yesterday, it would be ok... But... but!" A shuddering sob cut through what I was saying. "But... there's no way I can face him now... not like this... It's just not fair..." I wimpered.

"I'm sorry it's like this," Keiko murmured in my ear. "I'm sorry it's always like this." After she held me for another minute, I managed to stop my tears, wiping them away repeatedly. "Just try thinking of it this way: You aren't the friend he knows. That friend is back on Earth in a hospital somewhere. Just... let him sleep for a little while longer," she gave me a sad smile. I managed to return it, and nodded.

Onee-chan gave me a hand back to my feet and we turned to walk back into the plaza. "Well, you managed to learn one important part of being a girl all on your own." I raised an eyebrow, unsure what that was supposed to mean. That made her smile as she answered, "You learned that it's ok to cry when you're sad." Hearing her say it like that, I started to blush, automatically turning away to hide it.

We entered the plaza again, walking up to the group once more. There he was my... friend? Former friend? I wasn't even sure where he stood now. That boy... Yamada Kurenai.

"..." Thinking that name, I kicked myself in my mind. Kurenai literally meant 'crimson.'

"Ok, we're ready to go now," Onee-chan said when we arrived in front of the party once more. She didn't even bother giving an excuse for what happened, because that would just make them more suspicious, or make them come up with something. Instead, she just didn't even mention it, just let them be totally clueless and have no idea and they'll forget about it... —Was what she was thinking.

"If you'll just show us the way, let's get to it!" she beamed.

_Author Note: Muahaha worst time to introduce the friend evar!_


	142. Chapter 133

**Focus!**** Chapter 133**

"So, where did you get those kimonos?" the mace weilder, Kaito, asked. After starting out toward the first mini-dungeon, we had exchanged names, followed immediately by the young man's question.

"My sister made them actually," Onee-chan boasted.

"Wow, that's amazing!" the curved sword user, Enchi, exclaimed. Kaito shouted similarly, though Crimson... Yamada... Aahh! I couldn't even decide what to call him now! Shaking my head, I decided on Crimson. It might help me separate him from the Yamada I knew. He stayed silent, since we'd already told him about them yesterday.

"That's really, really awesome," Kaito complemented me, beaming. While a few days ago, I would surely have just puffed up my chest with pride and said thanks... now that was the farthest thing from my immediate reaction.

"No no, not at all!" I waved my hands in front of my face, my cheeks turning bright red. "Besides, I got a lot of help from Onee-chan!" At this point, I pressed my hands to my face to cover my cheeks. God, it felt like I was blushing constantly now... While everyone laughed, I turned to glance at Crimson again. Picking his voice out from the others, I noticed that his laughter sounded forced, he was just laughing along with the others. At the same time, I was looking intently at me, and I quickly turned away again. Why was he looking at me like that?

After the laughter died down, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. Crimson!? "Y,y,y,yes?!" my voice pitching up into a squeak.

"You know, I've been wondering..." Wondering what? I thought desperately. There's no way he could know who I really was, right? "You seem different today than before."

Unable to take the close proximity, I shuffled quickly backward, hiding halfway behind Onee-chan, then answering, "R,really? H,how so?"

A small grin crossed his face under his visor, but he suppressed it in a moment. "No, maybe it's just my imagination," shaking his head. I knew I was acting different than before, but seeing him, I just couldn't keep my cool at all. Even now, I was clutching onto Onee-chan like a little kid hiding behind my mother.

"Ah! So, I didn't realize you were in The Army, Crimson, it was really surprising when we found that we'd be helping you," Onee-chan suddenly changed the subject.

"You've met these two before?" Enchi, the curved swordsman, asked Crimson.

"Yeah, we met yesterday on the road heading to «Onizuma»," he explained before responding. "Well, I did say that The Army helped me level and get out of the starting area didn't I?" he grinned.

"Oh, that's right. I guess I never connected the two," Onee-chan giggled, giving a big smile. After she successfully pulled the attention away from me, we all continued on for a little while without much else to say. According to Kaito, who was leading the way, we were almost there, just a couple more minutes to go. That was when I felt my combat instincts kick in, the instant monsters appeared to ambush our group.

Moving at the same time, we attacked the five demi-human type 『Morgul Trackers』 that had popped out of the grass around us, just barely tall enough to conceal the small enemies. Cutting them all down in an instant, no one else had even had time to draw their weapons. Then, I stood for a few seconds, sword still in hand, and thought to myself, at least my combat skills are still ok.

I let out a slow breath, sheathing my blade and returned to the group. "Well that was... surprising." Kaito said slowly.

"You really are clearing level, haha" Enchi followed up, laughing. The little bit of the walk remaining passed without incident, and we arrived at a building. It stood alongside the path, just sitting there like a normal place. It was the dilapidated appearance and audible snarling sounds of monsters which gave away that the place was actually a small dungeon area.

Together, we walked up to the entrance, which was just a door hanging almost entirely off its hinges. Well, it wouldn't even be considered a 'door' like this, since it didn't block the noise from inside, not that that really mattered. As soon as Kaito tried to push the broken door open, it actually fell completely off the hinges, landing with a dull thud on the ground. Well, now no one would mistake it for a door again... I thought slowly while stepping over it. I was thinking too slow, my thoughts were all muddled, too concerned with the people in the group (Crimson), so I couldn't properly focus.

Come on, focus! I told myself to try and clear my head. But he keeps looking at me! Argh! It felt like I would have another mental overload any second if this kept up. Feeling a hard nudge in the side, I blinked, my senses turning to my surroundings again.

"Hello, Rei? Anyone home? We could really use some help right now." It was Crimson.

"O,o,o,ok!" I squeaked. Help with what? While I looked around, Onee-chan filled me in momentarily. Apparently, while I was lost in thought, we'd entered the building, packed wall to wall with monsters. On the way in, Kaito had explained that these dungeons were really small, so they didn't take long to clear at all. The problem was the huge number of mobs inside, which made them dangerous for people on this level. That was why they had requested help.

Onee-chan was currently on one side, blowing away waves of monsters with powerful attacks, while the three guys were on the other, slowly thinning the ranks of small mobs crashing against their shields. I was standing in the doorway, a small clear area around me, protected from the swarm of monsters in front of us. "Sorry!" Frantically, I pulled my weapons from their sheaths and ran forward to join the fight.

Once I joined, we made short work of the dungeon. Even if I could hardly pay attention to the fight, repeatedly messing up Sword Skills because I was distracted by the men's banter during the fight. Even so, it wasn't difficult at all with our enormous level advantage. As Kaito had said when I wasn't paying attention, the dungeon was really short, only a couple rooms before a short staircase leading to a basement, more swarms of mobs, and a little room with a treasure chest. We left their party while they collected the treasure, so it would all be split between them. Then we rejoined before moving on, Kaito again leading us down the road toward some other small dungeon.

In all, it probably took ten minutes to clear, meaning most of the time spent today would just be us traveling between locations. Actually... I would rather we be fighting. I had no idea how I would be able to keep up any sort of conversation with Crimson looking at me...


	143. Chapter 134

**Three Men**** Chapter 134**

_Author Note: mmmm, I'm trying to decide between two ways I want to take this chapter..._

_ Ahhh. Big thanks for Baughn and Quickshot0 for helping me figure this one out. o/_

For the rest of the day, we moved from one mini-dungeon to the next, wiping out the monsters inside with no real effort, and allowing the three men to take the valuable treasures from the chests at the end. They even swapped out some of their equipment for better stuff they got from the dungeons. Onee-chan tried bringing up whether we should upgrade our equipment soon, but quickly gave up because I was in no condition to talk.

I don't really remember it that well myself, because after the first dungeon, there wasn't much more I could do to keep from totally going crazy, and I wound up just shutting down. I passed the rest of the day passed in a self-imposed daze, until we only had an hour or two left before we would head back.

We arrived at one of the last dungeons, nearly indistinguishable from every other we had raided today and drew our weapons before walking inside. With my sword held over my head to start hacking away, I stopped. No monsters. I stood there for a minute before it finally sank in and I lowered my hands. Turning back, I dimly realized that the others were talking. Something about the treasure.

They moved forward and Onee-chan took me gently by the elbow, leading me forward with them. We walked through the two short rooms and took the stairs down to the basement, moving toward the treasure room. Then, everyone stopped. Some part of me realized that his wasn't normal, and I slowly began to shake off my many-hour long stupor. Leaning sideways to look around them, I saw three people up ahead, looking away from us. I stared for a bit, not really understanding.

There were more people? As I stared cursors appeared above them. Only, these ones weren't normal, they were orange. The word repeated in my mind while no one moved for some time.

Orange...

Orange...

Orange...

The word managed to dig in deep, getting a reaction.

Orange... Danger. I leaped in front of the group, raising the sword which I had forgotten to replace in its sheath. When I moved, they all spun around to look at me. With danger in front of me, I was quickly regaining my normal senses.

Their hands went up into the air when they saw me with my sword pointed at them. "Wait, don't attack!" The words didn't completely register, and I continued to stand with my weapon raised. I didn't actually know what to do now. I still registered danger, but I didn't know how to respond to it, so I just stood there without moving.

That's when Onee-chan stepped forward, demanding, "What are you doing here? Explain yourselves!" Her voice was so powerful, it made me shrink back, even though it wasn't directed at me.

Huddling against a wall with their hands still raised, one spoke quickly. "We aren't Orange Players. We were attacked by a group of them on the road. We fought them off, but some were green, so we turned orange when we fought back. We're just hiding out here until it wears off." It took a minute for my still slowly functioning brain to go through what he'd said.

Onee-chan stared at young man intensely and I could feel her trying to figure out if their story sounded trustworthy. "Here, we just cleared this area, but we haven't taken the treasure yet. You can have it, just, please don't hurt us," a second said.

"We should just grab the treasure and get out of here, I don't want to be anywhere near Orange Players if I can help it," Kaito advised.

My mind was finally clear enough that I noticed something. Looking at their cursors, I mentally pointed out that we had met these people before, so they probably weren't bad. After throwing a glance my way, Onee-chan looked back over at them to read their names.

『Red-Eyed XaXa』, 『Johnny Black』, and 『PoH』 they read. The names stuck in my mind, though my thoughts were still muddled, so I couldn't really remember them. But if we met them before, they couldn't be that bad, right?

Onee-chan let out a long sigh, then looked over at Kaito and nodded. "Ok, we're going to take the treasure and be on our way. We'll overlook you, since it seems likely that you aren't PKers. If you ever have to deal with those kinds of people again, be more careful." With that, she waved us forward and we all walked carefully past the three men. I lowered my sword to my side and followed along, keeping a hand on Onee-chan's sleeve while the rest of my senses were quickly returning.

We walked into the treasure room, Enchi watching behind us. Crimson moved forward to open the chest, and I stood in the middle, with a weird feeling.

"Something feels... weird... somehow," I mumbled. I had just about shaken off my zombie-like state from the last few hours, but there was still a disconnect somewhere. I closed my eyes and put a hand to my head, trying to focus. It took a few seconds, then I managed to figure out what the feeling was. "That's it, a trap," I realized aloud. Even though there were no traps in this dungeon, the unexplainable (and impossible) sixth sense for traps I'd developed in recent months told me that this chest was definitely trapped.

Then, "A trap?!" The warning bells went off in my head when I shouted that, but of course it came too late. Crimson had just lifted the lid of the chest, and I watched as three tiny wires, invisible until they moved, snapped with light 'chiin' sounds.

As soon as I saw that, the one thought that entered my mind was: I have to protect Crimson, I have to protect Tanaka. Instinctively, I knew what the trap would do, so when Crimson jumped away from the chest, I darted forward as fast as I could. At the same time, knives flew into the room through numerous small openings, coming from every direction.

I have to protect him.

Leaping forward, I swept my eyes across every one of the blades in the air, picking out the ones which would hit him, and dashing as fast as I could to block every last one. In a single rush, so fast my vision blurred from the movement, I threw myself in front of the blades, so fast it was like they all struck at once.

Standing there afterward, I let out a low moan, the shock and pain feeling like a kick in the stomach. My knees went weak, and I fell forward, supporting myself with one hand. A continuous burning sensation shot all through my body where the weapons stayed embedded. Poison? The burning spread all through my body, so I could hardly keep my eyes open as I turned halfway around to make sure Crimson wasn't hurt.

In the corner of my distorted vision, a symbol appeared on my perfectly clear Heads Up Display, marking that I was paralyzed. "So that's how it is..."

"Hahaha, I can not believe you guys actually fell for that." A familiar voice came from down the hall somewhere. I could hear their leisurely footsteps echoing through the door, from down the hall. They weren't at all worried about us getting away. Looking back as best I could, I found that everyone besides Crimson had been hit by at least some of those daggers. While they hardly did any damage, they had paralyzed everyone struck. Even in this much pain, without the System Assist enforcing the paralysis, I could still move just fine. The problem was... Could I obviously break the rules... in front of him? Even if he didn't know it was really me... Still...

—Will he survive if you don't? The thought came from Onee-chan, who was holding herself back as well while I made up my mind. Though really, it was hardly a question. Of course he wouldn't survive against three people on his own while we were all disabled.

Gulping down my fear, I made the decision and staggered back to my feet. Forming plan between us with what little we had to work with, we managed to at least come up with something in the few moments left before those men reached the room. Rushing over to kneel beside Enchi and Kaito, we pulled our only two «Teleport Crystals» from our back pockets and pressed the small objects into their hands.

"Get yourselves our of here, now!" Onee-chan commanded. They only hesitated for a moment, with guilty looks on their faces. We all knew there was no way to help them once those men got here, not when they were paralyzed like that. So, they mumbled their respective teleport commands, disappearing in a flutter of blue light.

Now it was just us three. And the PKers were almost here. "How are you two..." Crimson was muttering.

"We'll explain it later... maybe..." Onee-chan answered vaguely while turning in place to face the closest town, based on her memory of direction of the road we'd been on. Stopping, she pointed us at the door out of the room. Well, we had our heading.

"Who in their right mind would trust orange players when they say they didn't take some treasure?" came another, taunt from not far outside the door, accompanied by laughter.

Grabbing Crimson from both sides, we rushed for the door, gaining as much speed as we could. "Me first," Onee-chan said. We'd never tried this before, let alone with three people, since it pretty much seemed like cheating as well, and was decently likely to get us killed. But honestly, there wasn't much of a choice now. We were in a dead-end hallway, partially underground, in a dungeon. On the other hand, we would probably just try to fight it out if Crimson wasn't here, but that wasn't an option either.

So, we ran with everything we had, right out the doorway and directly to the wall across from it. At the last moment, Onee-chan activated «Flash», moving us as far and as fast as the skill's level would allow. Like it had done the last time, when we had accidentally moved through a wall and out of the world, we moved so fast that the server missed us colliding with the wall and we appeared in absolute darkness. It was the same sort of empty space that comprised the insides of the floors. Guessing that something like this would happen, we kept running a short distance, holding arm in arm to keep from getting lost in the dark. Meanwhile, Crimson repeatedly demanded that we explain what the hell was going on, but we had to ignore it for now. We had to get back to town first.

After we had run some way, though not nearly as far as we may have made it alone, with Crimson setting the pace, Onee-chan pulled open the map and checked our location. It pointed us out a short distance from the dungeon we had just glitched our way out of. Scanning around, she found another dungeon like that one, pointing it out while I retrieved some magic shards from our inventory to use for light.

We set off running again, following the map toward the other dungeon. Since we didn't know if it had been cleared, or if we would actually be able to land inside of it with «Flash», we figured we'd just go directly up. Of course, that required something pointing upward, so we would need a flat, vertical surface. Like the wall of the dungeon.

Finding the hole taken out of the otherwise completely empty, black area, we ran up to it, jumping and kicking off of the wall. I activated «Flash» again, launching us up so fast we moved through the ground, coming to a stop a number of meters above the ground. After all falling back down in a heap, we managed to get back to our feet, releasing a collective sigh now that we were out of danger. I glanced up to see the paralysis mark still floating next to my hp.

I lowered my head a little. This was going to take some serious explaining later...

_Author Note: Since I'm already behind on releasing this one, and this is a good place to cut the chapter, I'll post it like this. :3_

_Oh and: 300,000 words! Hurray! \o/_


	144. Chapter 135

** Run Chapter 135**

Standing there, I let the tension release from my shoulders. We still had a lot to explain, but at least we'd gotten away from those PKers.

"Well well well, looks like we found ourselves some class A cheaters." Hearing that voice, we all spun to face the three men, standing nonchalantly, as if they'd been waiting here for us all along. "But don't worry, there's no cheating death."

"Who are you people...?" I muttered, disbelieving this whole situation. How could this even be possible? We'd used a clearly cheating method to escape perfectly, and yet... My eyes ran over their names one more time. PoH, Red-Eyed XaXa, Johnny Black. Again, I knew those names. But I still couldn't place them.

That's when PoH drew his dagger. Even if I couldn't remember the person, I that dagger was something I could not forget. It brought back the month old memory of the tenth floor boss raid. These were the three who came out of nowhere and LA'd the boss after it had used a petrifying attack on the raid group. That abomination of a weapon was the special Boss Drop. From what we'd heard afterward, it had a chance to instantly kill anyone it hit, and if it didn't kill them, it would leave a permanent mark.

After PoH drew his dagger, a big smile grew across his face. "We're the «Laughing Coffin». Saying that, they all pulled up their sleeves to show their right wrists. There, clear as day, was a mark. It was dead black line art against their skin, and I focused in on it to make out the details.

The outside was clearly the shape of a coffin, while inside, there was a strange figure which resembled a face, with huge lips. To the right of that was a skeletal arm. I glanced up from their hands to see that they had the same symbol, colored in, registered as their guild mark. So they had physically marked themselves as part of their killing guild?

Except, those marks didn't look like any of the useable makeup items I'd seen before. They were too jagged, and all three were just a bit different. "Like the mark? Made it ourselves," one of the other guys, who sounded a good deal younger, smirked.

Don't tell me... They... "You... that's not... the knife?" even if what I said didn't completely make sense, the younger one, Red-Eyed XaXa, replied anyway.

"Bingo!"

"What other use would I have for this thing?" came from PoH. By the looks of it, he was the leader. "A weapon that kills people before they realize they're going to die..." He shook his head. "But," raising his head a little, "It did confirm what we were thinking though. If it's a death game, killing people is a must." The grin under his hood grew even wider. "Why else would it let each of us, who have been killing players, survive twenty-eight consecutive 'hits'?" They all laughed, slowly beginning to step forward. Automatically, we all stepped back, retreating at pace with their advance.

"It's showtime." As soon as we heard that, we all turned heel and ran. However, Onee-chan sent a thought through our bond just as we began to turn. Crimson was still much slower than us with his lower level and heavy armor. We wouldn't be able to just run away, we would have to hold them off while retreating toward the city. One hard kick gained me enough momentum that I hopped, turning in midair and drawing my weapons while still moving alongside Crimson.

My eyes widened, the last instant before the quiet one, Johnny Black, stabbed me straight in the chest with a dagger. So fast! I realized this too late, getting thrown backward by the weight of his attack. Bouncing off the ground, a new icon appeared beside the paralysis, poison this time. Checking my hp at about 80%, I saw that it was still recovering, though nowhere near as fast as usual. By the time my eyes were done checking my status, I'd flipped around, planting my feet against the ground and launching myself forward again, I threw my dagger forward with «Reaver», deflecting Johnny Black's attack as he went after Crimson.

I followed up with a «Slant» from my sword, forcing him to jump away. Meanwhile, Onee-chan was off to one side, exchanging blows with PoH while dashing away whenever XaXa got too close, since she could hardly manage against PoH on her own. These guys were seriously strong, I realized as Johnny Black charged forward again. Going two against three, I don't think we could actually win, even if we weren't protecting Crimson. We had to get back to the city as fast as possible.

Watching closely, I saw him shift his dagger backhand, lowering into position for a «Double Undercut». Bringing my sword straight down, I used my rather high Strength, paired with the heavier weight of my weapon, to stop the first upward slanting cut dead. His body froze due to the Sword Skill's Delay, though it would hardly be for an instant.

I knew that Onee-chan was getting overwhelmed, and I had to help her soon, so instead of unleashing a Sword Skill to deal some damage to Johnny Black, I stepped forward, point blank range, and shot my fist out in a punch containing as much power as I could put into it. The attack, probably helped by the «Martial Arts» skill we'd never really used, collided with his stomach, sending him flying off his feet and quite a few meters backward to land on his back.

That would get me the couple seconds I needed. Kicking off hard, I swung my sword backward, then forward into a «Sliding Dash», coming in from the side to have XaXa flip his dagger around and deflect the attack away. However, when they moved in to counter, I threw my offhand to Onee-chan and she pulled me out of the way, moving in to slash with a powerful «Horizontal» to counter their attacks, before I whipped back around and threw them away with a second.

While they were all staggered, we rushed forward again, grabbing Crimson and using two more «Flashes» to cover as much distance toward the city as we could. It really wasn't that far away now, but it would still take another minute or so at this pace. While running, I looked back to see them eating up the distance between us. Then, they disappeared. I blinked.

A sharp pain stabbed right through me, stopping me dead in place. Slowly turning to face forward again, I stared at Johnny Black. This close, I could see right under his hood. And he was a young, not bad looking man under it. So... why? A sideways glance showed me that the other two had done the same to the others. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the tall man by his arms, using all my strength to lift him off his feet.

"The hell?" He gasped, struggling in my grasp. It looked like they had put nearly all of their points into Agility, that's why they could beat us in speed. But that meant we had the advantage in Strength. Pressing my foot hard into the ground, I started to turn counterclockwise. Loosening my grip on his arms, the momentum I built by spinning pulled him away, so his arms slipped out of my hands and I grabbed his legs. Still spinning, I stepped toward the other two, who hopped back, looks of complete confusion on their faces.

In the meantime, Onee-chan and Crimson started running away again. As soon as PoH and Red-Eyed XaXa looked at them running, I released my hold on Johnny Black's feet, sending him flying into them and bowling them all over. That crazy spinning left me staggering for a few moments, but I managed to recover and tore off after the others.

Even with all that, when I looked back, the PKers had only been put off for a few more seconds. Gripping my sword anxiously, I waited until they came into range again before turning back and parrying the first attack. However, XaXa leaped from the other side, aiming for Crimson without warning. Just that stab earlier had taken Crimson's hp down near half even with that heavy armor of his. I couldn't let him get hit again. Turning halfway around, I swung a rather awkward «Slant» down into the airborne man, blasting him into the ground.

Pain sliced down the length of my back and I staggered away, turning just in time to raise my dagger and somewhat deflect the next attack so it cut slightly into my chest. My hp wasn't much above half now. Hopping back to gain some more distance, and to stay close to the running Crimson, I shook myself, gripping my weapons tightly to try and shake off the pain.

Onee-chan was still fighting PoH, which was good because at least his weapon's special effect wouldn't activate against her, though I hoped she could avoid getting hit, since it would leave marks...

My focus returned to my fight when XaXa and Johnny Black started their next attack. They shifted to both sides, coming in from high and low at once. I used the delay in their movements to just back up again, forcing them in toward the center as they attacked. As long as I could keep them coming at me, I could keep it up. It would give me time to spot their attacks and counter, and all I had to do was play for time.

Charging straight forward so I couldn't just dodge around again, they swung their weapons in from opposite sides. Raising my weapons, I used my superior Strength again to block both, though the force chipped away at my hp some more, since they were using Sword Skills, increasing the power of the attacks. However, it also opened them up for my «Horizontal Arc» counterattack, though the Delay wasn't long enough for me to land it squarely on either of them.

While I drew back my sword arm, they both dashed forward again, much faster than I could and thrust at me with a «Linear». I twisted my body, using my dagger to deflect one while the other graved my upper arm, then jumped back, closer to Crimson again. With my back to the city, I couldn't actually tell how close we were, though it probably wouldn't take too much longer. My hp was sitting just about on the halfway mark, repeatedly changing from green to yellow as I took grazing attacks.

There were only ten more seconds left on my «Flash» cooldown when in the corner of my eye, I saw something change in the pace of Onee-chan's fight. A backward hop granted me the moment I needed to glance that way. Except, my mouth fell open when I saw what was happening. Without using Sword Skills, PoH was just wailing away, so fast that Onee-chan could hardly keep up her defense with both of her weapons. Forget about any chance for a counterattack, she could hardly move her feet.

That's when two more heavy stab wounds pierced through my chest. Falling backward, I realized I'd been distracted too long. Rolling backward, up to my feet, two more slashes tore across my back during the roll, before I whipped around with a «Whirl», the heavy attack knocking them back a little when they blocked it. While they regained their footing, I dashed forward for the first time in the fight. I had to do something to free up Onee-chan from that onslaught of attacks.

Slashing past them with «Reaver», they hesitated. While I was no behind them, blocked from the way I had been trying to run all along, Crimson's back was now wide open. I used that moment of hesitation to charge them again, with «Rage Spike» this time. Since they would see the charge coming, the delayed attack at the end would help keep them from countering.

During the charge, I glanced sideways once more. Right as PoH struck down with a heavy overhand blow. Onee-chan, who's sword had been deflected sideways, blocked the attack straight on with her dagger. A high pitched sound rang out, then her dagger shattered, the particles scattering all around as his blade cut cleanly down her chest. With a scream, she fell back, her now empty hand holding where she had received the blow.

"Onee-chan!" I screamed, cutting my attack short right at the end of the charge. They blocked, but when no attack came, their stances weakened. Throwing all my weight into it, I threw a kick, as powerful as I could, right into Red-Eyed XaXa's side, blasting both of the men off their feet, tumbling sideways. Turning back to face the other fight, I sheathed my sword for just an instant before drawing it again so I could use «Flash Draw». In those moments, PoH flipped his dagger around, using a dagger skill I'd never seen before and thrust straight forward, a huge light effect indicating that it was a powerful, high level skill.

Onee-chan, prone on the ground, blocked the attack flat across the blade of her sword. A crashing sound blew out from the attack colliding with the heavy blade. The pressure flattened all the grass around them, even making me slide backward slightly. After holding for a moment, her sword's massively reinforced durability held out, though I could see cracks tear all up and down the blade, chips and pieces coming out all over.

With my attack charged, I kicked off, using «Flash» to appear directly between PoH and my sister, point blank range, already swinging my sword.

The attack flew clear through the air.

Standing, off balance from my attack, I realized that PoH had turned his body as if he knew exactly what I was going to do, so my blade slid right past him. Raising his dagger again, it took on the heavy light effect from the overhand attack he had used on Onee-chan just before. My eyes went wide. I would die if he hit me.

With my sword way off at my side from that last attack, I raised my dagger up to block. His weapon came down, crashing into my own, just as it had against her's. The pressure forced me to my knees, his attack still coming down on me.

You were a good weapon, thank you for serving me up until now... I'm sorry. Twisting my entire body, my my wrist turned, twisting my dagger sideways. A screech emanated from the blade right before it shattered in my grasp. With me twisted as far to the side as I possibly could, PoH's attack skimmed past my shoulder, hitting nothing but air. A movement in the corner of my eye made me turn, raising my sword arm just in time to have two attacks cut into my forearm. "Guh," I gasped. My eyes moved back to PoH, his hand striking out with that evil dagger again.

Sucking in my breath, with nothing else to resort to, my foot shot out, kicking him in the stomach to knock him away. Using the my arm which I'd been propping myself up with, I grabbed Onee-chan who was trying to get to her feet, and used the one foot I had left on the ground to kick away as hard as I possibly could, throwing us just a little further from them.

Onee-chan rolled on top of me, grunting when their attacks landed in her back, then turned, slashing across them to knock them back again. Grabbing me around the front, she kicked to her feet and started running, gasping again as two more stabs thrust into her back. In the corner of my vision, I could see her health drop into red. Right in front of us, there was the city, the safe area only a little bit farther.

Turning out of her grasp, I spun us around, whipping my sword across horizontally with «Whirl» again. Not seeing them before turning, I found that they were using the same powerful thrust attack PoH had. Unlike him, they didn't have overpowered weapons, so with a Sword Skill active, my sword would be fine. I realized this, and followed through with the attack.

However, before my eyes, PoH used «Flash» to appear, already stabbing forward with the same overpowered attack that had heavily damaged Onee-chan's sword. If that came together with theirs!

The weapons struck together, like an explosion going off. I felt my heavy weapon, which had easily withstood attacks from overpowered bosses, shuddering in my grasp. Just hold on! I thought desperately. The pressure peaked, a moment of stillness, then I felt an impact crash against my whole body, sending me flying back. A shattering sound filled my ears, and I let out a sad breath before crashing into the ground and tumbling.

The world spun for a few moments, until I suddenly struck metal. My momentum dropped when I heard a cry and heavy metal armor fell on me. Realizing this meant I'd rolled into Crimson, I forced my weak limbs under me, pushing up from the ground. Looking at the ground, I found that my sword had somehow avoided shattering, though most of the blade was broken off, leaving just the first few centimeters intact.

Looking up from the ground as I tried pushing up with Crimson on top of me, I saw Onee-chan sprinting with all she had toward us. Even faster than her, the PKers rushed in to finish us off. PoH was still a little farther back from my kick, but that wouldn't last long. Whipping my head the other way, I saw that the safe area, marked by a vague white line, was _right there_, practically within spitting distance. Leaning low, Onee-chan leaped the last of the distance to us, landing on top of us both who were fighting to get back to our feet, and sent us all rolling across the grass.

With them right on top of us, we gave up on running, or even standing, and thrashed around, just trying to make it the last bit of the way to safety. Onee-chan was in red, and I wasn't far above it, while Crimson had so much less hp that pretty much anything would kill him.

The PKers reached all of us, stabbing down mercilessly with their daggers to finish us off, and we all thrust our hands as far toward the white line that we could, the daggers coming down at our throats. A flash of light. Their weapons bounced off, just short of ending our lives, deflected by the anti-criminal code. 『Inner Area』 appeared in my vision and I rolled my head backward to see the first couple knuckles of two fingers stretched over the line. I let out a shaky breath, that was almost the end there... again...

That's when PoH kicked my arm, knocking my hand out of the safe area. He thrust his dagger down again, but I kicked against the ground with my feet, pushing both of my forearms into the safe area. When the other five people realized we still weren't completely safe, we started desperately throwing ourselves into the Inner Area. However, they grabbed our legs, pulling us out again.

Thrashing frantically, I screamed at the top of my lungs, in such a screech I don't know if it was even understandable, "**HELP! SOMEONE SAVE US!**" Grabbing at the ground, our high Strength helped, but there wasn't anything for us to grab onto, so we wound up just clawing at the grass while trying to slow them down. Then, Onee-chan got a good kick in, flinging herself backward into the safe area and grabbing our one of hands each. Spreading her legs, she took a wide stance and leaned all the way back, desperately trying to hold against all three of them.

"You... can't... have... them..." she panted, her face clenched in pain. Centimeter by centimeter, they gained ground, but I kept screaming, calling for help, praying someone in town would hear me and come. After about half a minute of the slowly devolving deadlock, when we had just our hands left keeping us safe, people finally appeared, coming out from the city streets a short distance away. Only, it wasn't a couple people, there were a lot of them.

"Damn, guess it's no good," Johnny Black, who had been holding Onee-chan before she got loose, sighed.

"Oh well, let's get out of here for now," PoH let go of my feet and Onee-chan dragged me all the way to safety with one hand.

Red-Eyed XaXa was the last one to let go, allowing Onee-chan to pull Crimson in too. "Kill ya' later, Cheaters," he snickered while they all turned away. Then they ran off, long gone before the crowd swarming out of the city came close.

I looked over at everyone coming toward us. "This is going to take some explaining, isn't it...?" I glanced up again to make sure that the paralysis had at least worn off, which it had. Well, Red-Eyed XaXa's nickname wasn't going to spread... for today at least...


	145. Chapter 136

** Down Chapter 136**

"Now... explain yourselves." We were sitting on the grass in one of the little open fields within the rural sixth floor's main town «Pala», and Crimson was demanding an explanation for earlier. After we had thanked the crowd of people who scared off the Laughing Coffin, (also finding out that so many people had come because my screams could be heard clear across the city), they returned to the town, allowing us a minute to rest before Crimson got up, saying we better come with him. And that left us here. "The only reason I haven't already told the paper is because you saved my life. Now tell me, how did you cheat? Are you connected to Kayaba somehow? Working for him?"

With him staring angrily at us under that visor, I waved my arms frantically, denying it. "No way! That's not it at all!"

"Then explain." With the back of his hand, he flipped the visor up on top of his helmet. His eyes bore into me, glaring so intensely, I couldn't even form words trying to explain. That's when Onee-chan put an arm in front of me, half protecting, half telling me to back off.

"A while back, our character data got screwed up somehow," she explained in a deep, serious voice, though she inadvertently skipped the 'how' of it. "A lot of things got messed up for us. While we can't be paralyzed anymore, the reason for it is because we have no System Assist."

"What do you mean 'no System Assist'?" Crimson asked, his eyebrows scrunching together even more suspiciously.

"What I'm saying is, the System doesn't help us with Sword Skills."

"That's an obvious lie! You were using a bunch of them just before!" he shouted angrily. Fortunately, there wasn't anyone in this field to overhear. Maybe that was why he chose it...?

Onee-chan shook her head, then stood. Facing away so she wouldn't put him on edge, (even though it was impossible to attack someone in town) she drew her heavily damaged sword and told him to watch closely. She lifted the blade above her head and it took on the normal glow of a «Vertical». From there, she swung the blade down, nowhere near the speed of a Sword Skill. If that was done with a blunt weapon, it wouldn't even hurt whoever she hit. Then she repeated the action a number of times, growing faster each time until her attack moved slightly faster than a regular, un-boosted Sword Skill.

Sheathing her sword, she turned to face him again and asked if that had shown him what she meant. "The System doesn't interfere with our attacks at all. The only way to use a Sword Skill is to do it ourselves. It's not really that we have a cheating advantage... Basically, we have to fight in a completely different way than everyone else."

"I see..." he murmured, not looking particularly pleased by the explanation, though he didn't say anything more about it. "Then, you still have to explain how you ran right through a wall."

At that, I couldn't help but look down. That... was obviously cheating. "For that... I don't really know what to call it. We found out it was possible a little while ago, that if we move too fast, the System won't actually check if we run into anything, so we can move through solid objects. We originally found this out a little while back when we accidentally did the same thing we did just now and got stuck inside of a floor. We almost died because of it back then... Even if it is a cheat... I would rather cheat than lose my life, my little sister's, or yours. No amount of pride can make up for a lost life."

"That's... true..." he mumbled, looking away slightly.

"So, could you not go around telling everyone we're cheaters? We have enough problems to deal with as it is," I noticed her glance at me when she hesitated briefly. "Both of us."

After thinking for a long time, Crimson let out a long sigh. "Fine, I'll leave it for now, but I'll be watching you. Don't you dare go do anything to ruin the guild's reputation!" He glared at us as he said that, reminding me of what he'd told us about when this Death Game began. Though it felt like forever ago now, that long past event happened just yesterday. He had explained back then how he'd been scared for his life once he realized what was happening, and hid in the «Starting City» for months before The Army helped him level up. He probably figured he owed everything he had now to them...

Leaning forward, I clasped one of his hands in both of my own. "We'll definitely protect the guild's reputation," I said earnestly, staring at him straight in the eyes to show him I meant it.

After being taken aback for a moment, he nodded slowly. "It's a promise." Without another word, he stood up, turned, and walked away. Watching his back until it disappeared into the city streets, we both waited a few seconds longer before letting out long, relieved sighs. Slouching forward, all my muscles went limp. That battle had left us both beaten and exhausted, but we had to hide it until now so we could talk him out of exposing... one of our secrets at least.

Sitting there together, we both started to nod off. The chill of winter had recently lifted, the season turning to spring, and this was a plains type floor; the grass was so soft, it was like lying on down feathers. Even if I could have fought off sleep, I didn't want to. As everything went dark, I reached out, grabbing hold of Onee-chan. She pulled me closer, resting my head in her lap. I felt my last last lingering worries float away, for now at least, and fell asleep with a small smile on my face.

…

It wasn't until a number of hours later, probably some time around midnight, when we woke again to return to our room on the Eighth floor. Shuffling in the door, I walked over and flopped face first onto the bed, still half-asleep. After a few seconds, Onee-chan still hadn't dropped onto the bed, so I looked up. Too sleepy to read her feelings clearly through our bond, I looked at her back as she faced the window, her arms wrapped around her stomach as she stood like a statue.

"Onee-chan?" Her shoulders stiffened for a moment, then she released on of her hands, moving it in front of her for a few moments, though I couldn't really tell what she was doing. Then she turned around, her face downcast. "What's wrong?"

"I'm... sorry..." she mumbled. "I couldn't beat _him_. _He_ wasn't even fighting seriously at first, and as soon as _he_ started using Sword Skills..." when she said that, I knew exactly who the 'he' was. PoH. Moving her hand to open her menu, she tapped the button to remove her clothes, and my eyes widened.

Down her front, a single black line stretched from her collarbone, across the inside of her left breast, and down her stomach, ending a little short of her right hip.

"That's from-" I stared, the scene replaying in my mind, when PoH had slashed downward, breaking her dagger and cutting down her chest. I stared, I don't know for how long. She slowly ran her hand down the scar a number of times, her fingers shaking slightly. Then, she touched a second, smaller mark, a little below her rib cage, shifted just slightly to her left side. That must be where she was stabbed earlier in the fight, I realized after a minute.

"I guess it was too selfish... always wanting to be real twins..." Her head lowered slightly, her shoulders shaking with shallow sobs. "If I didn't wish for that..." her voice gave out, her teeth clenching as a stream of thoughts passed, though she forcibly blocked me from hearing them.

My hand stretched out automatically, but stopped in midair. Though my mouth was open, I couldn't think of anything to say. Really, what _could_ I say? It had already happened and there was no changing it... My hand fell back onto the blanket under me, settling there for a moment.

"Then does that mean...?" Lifting the hand again, I swiped my menu open, intending to check if we had lost the doubled effect on our passive, for being identical. Though, I seemed to recall it said 'equipped identically', which might mean this wouldn't effect it. However, the thought reminded me to take my clothes first, before changing to the 『Skill』 screen, because it wouldn't be active anyway with them on. Pulling up the «Stat Boost» passive skill, I skimmed its description to find the percent listed.

Surprisingly, it was still at 2%. I was probably because it only dealt with our equipment, but at least we still had it. I smiled and looked back up to tell her, but stopped.

Staring at me with wide eyes, tiny tear droplets beginning to form in the corners, Onee-chan didn't move a muscle for some time, as if paralyzed. Even her mind was completely blank. The sudden intensity forced me into silence for nearly a minute, before I mustered the will to whisper.

"What?" That did it.

Letting out a wail unlike anything I'd ever heard, Onee-chan collapsed onto the bed, grabbing me and squeezing tight. "Onee-chan, that hurts..." I winced.

"I'm so sorry!" That was all I could make out before her cries devolved into anguished babble. Unable to do anything, I wrapped my hands around her shoulders, hugging her warmly back.

Even so, it took a long, long time for her to calm down again, enough to let go of me. Trembling badly, she looked at me and nearly broke down again before I grabbed her, assuring her it was alright.

"Now tell me. What's wrong?" I tried to summon up that older brother voice that I'd used so naturally until a mere day ago, but I don't know if I really managed it or not. Either way, she sniffed a few times, then sobbed once more before responding.

"You have the same mark..." she whispered. My jaw dropped when I realized what she was saying. I had the same black scar running down my chest? I couldn't check with her holding me like she was, but I knew it was true. Though it took me a few minutes just to come up with a plausible explanation.

Probably... because our character data comes from the same source after Kayaba Akihiko had to rewrite our data. So changing one of our appearances would also change the other's. That was the only reasoning I could come up with, though in truth I couldn't be more clueless as to the actual cause.

"It's... ok." I said slowly, forcing a smile. "It's not like it will show when our clothes are on anyway."

"But... I _just_ became the big sister. And then I let this happen to you," she sobbed out. Her hand clutched against my stomach, her fingernails biting into my skin. Even with the smile on my face, I could feel tears beginning to form in my eyes. This mark wasn't like those ones we'd had on our faces before, they were permanent. They would stay with us, a reminder of what happened today, until we died or escaped this world. Onee-chan would be reminded of this every time she saw these ugly scars...

"Don't worry, we'll get stronger so it won't happen again."

"Nn," she nodded into my chest. "We'll get stronger, much much stronger."

Crying for a little while longer seemed to exhaust the last of her energy, and she fell asleep in my arms. While I lay there, looking at her sleeping face with small flecks of wetness still clinging to her skin, an old memory came to me, something I hadn't thought of in a long, long time. "I guess some things never change."

It had been some time in grade school, probably between second and fourth grade, if I had to guess. She had somehow managed to get into a fight with a boy in our class. The funny part was that she won the fight, although she had plenty of scrapes and bruises to show for it. After going through many scoldings from our teachers and our parents, she still refused to say she was sorry, and got suspended for a few days. When I asked her why, she explained that it had something to do with that boy taking another girl's stuffed animal (a polar bear I think) and refusing to give it back, that's why she'd fought him, to get the girl's toy back. Having succeeded, she was proud of herself for it- so of course she wouldn't apologize.

It was a couple days later, after she returned to school, while we were waiting for our teacher to arrive for the next class to start,(1) that there was another... problem. When she was talking to her friend- the same little girl who had her stuffy stolen- that she found out that the boy had taken it again the day after their fight, tearing it apart. Going into a rage, she thrashed the boy. He couldn't even put up a fight this time. It was only when the teacher arrived that she stopped.

She was stoic throughout the entire time she was questioned about it, then scolded for it, then suspended again. It was only when we got home, late at night in our room when she began to cry. But not because she was scolded, or even suspended for a week. Back then too, she had explained through her wails that she had let her friend get hurt, that she couldn't protect her.

"I guess... you were kind of a big sister all along, weren't you?" Patting her head. It felt different now, doing it as the younger sibling. Less protective, more... like I was saying 'thank you', or maybe 'good job', I guess... For the first time tonight, I felt a sincere smile touch my lips, even if it was a bit sad.

After tucking her into bed, I got up to turn the lights off. In the corner of my eye, I caught my reflection in the mirror, still propped up against the wall where I had placed it last night. Stopping, I looked at myself for a minute. Taking my hand, I lightly ran it down the long black scar, exactly identical to my sister's. It was strange, it didn't really have a _feel_, the way a regular scar would be slightly less even than regular skin. There wasn't any change in the perfect smooth feeling of my skin, but I could still kind of feel it somehow. Like... a kind of fuzzy... coldness... or something.

Shortly after realizing that I had no idea how to put it into words, I removed my hand. Whatever it was, it wasn't a good feeling. For now, we'd get some much-needed rest. I walked lightly over to the door, tapping the wall to access the room's option panel and turning the light off.

Just as the room was engulfed in darkness, I remembered something. Slipping into the hall, I glanced around to make sure there was no one in the hall before closing the door lightly behind me. Since there was no one awake to see me like this, I leaned my back against the door and opened my menu. First, I sent a short message to Thinker.

.

『Some stuff happened.』

『Not sure what we'll do next.』

『We'll keep in touch.』

.

Once that was done, I sent a second message, this one to Argo.

.

『There's a dangerous new PK group out there.』

『They're called the Laughing Coffin.』

『The leader is PoH. The other two I've seen』

『are Johnny Black and Red-Eyed XaXa.』

『They use daggers, paralysis poison, and traps.』

『They were the ones who crashed the tenth floor Boss Raid.』

『PoH is using the cursed dagger that dropped』

『from the tenth floor Boss. He is way too strong.』

『—Free』

.

I'd never heard Argo report on them before, and she had always kept an eye on PK activity, to warn people. These guys were apparently unknown, even after the stunt they pulled with the Boss. So: there was a good chance that no one else knew their names. Why we did was still a mystery to me, but at the more info, the better. However, when I moved to press the button to send my message something else came to mind. It wasn't a pleasant thought, but it felt kind of necessary. Typing again, I added onto the end.

.

『By the way, you can take «Harmonious Convoy»』

『and «Veiled Wayfinder» off of your unique weapons list.』

.

I was talking about the list of special or unique weapons that people had found, which she would quite regularly sell information about. Most of the weapons on it were boss drops, though our weapons had made it onto the list, being made like they were all the way back on the third floor. She would probably realize immediately what it meant- that both our weapons were gone, immediately following a message about a new PK group. But... I shrugged. I hadn't really thought of hiding it really. We were still alive at least. Still, for their attacks to destroy those weapons... I shook my head. We the frontline had moved up more than ten floors since we created those weapons. Of course they wouldn't be absurdly overpowered anymore. Though honestly, I didn't even know if they were on par with equipment this high up. The monsters had always died when we hit them, so it I'd figured they were good enough.

Well, I guess 'good enough' wasn't going to cut it anymore. Not with our equipment, and not with ourselves. Because honestly, our slower leveling was due to more than just the spike in required exp. We'd been skating along for some time now, resting on the huge lead we had received at the beginning. Without realizing it, people like those PKers had already passed us by.

I pressed the send button and the window disappeared. I didn't get a message back.

With a long sigh, I slipped back into our room. The only thing left was to get some sleep and see what came next. Whatever happened, it looked like our days of quietly working with the clearing group, or strolling around and helping out the mid-levels, were at an end. It was about time we got serious.

_Author Note: Rawr, it takes so much longer to write these kinds of chapters. T-T_

_Aaaand I forgot to put a title... again... *Goes back to fix it*_

_Omg and I forgot the footnote. Thanks 1234q1234q for pointing that out *fixes*_

(1) In Japan, teachers move between the classes. I don't know if this happens in grade school but... *shrug*?


	146. Chapter 137

**Starting Up**** Chapter 137**

_Author Note: Finally, I get a chance to actually sit down so I can write again. Also, I've been reading Halkegenia Online, (it's amazing) but it's making me feel like my own style of writing is poor.(Even though I'm doing it on purpose.) T-T So don't be surprised if you see little bits of more advanced words and whatnot here and there._

We woke the next day, and despite the smile on Onee-chan's face, I could feel that yesterday was still troubling her. She couldn't even hide it completely, like when she winced looking at me in the morning before I put my clothes on.

Once we had dressed, we walkedto a little restaurant, alive with everyone preparing for their day. After eating a quiet meal of watery soup and dry bread, we sat for a while, the shop emptying little by little as everyone else moved on, until we sat alone.

"What no?" I asked when it didn't seem like she would say anything.

"I..." Then she took a breath, her features hardening somewhat as she drew forth her resolve. "We need to gain more levels, that's the most important thing to getting stronger." She thought for a few seconds before continuing, "However, given the way the exp requirements are increasing now, and mobs aren't giving any more, it would probably be more effective to raise our skill levels instead." I nodded slowly; unlike our levels, our skills had increased pretty steadily all along. If we could raise them to gain new abilities- new Sword Skills or Active Skills, like «Flash»- we could continue to get stronger at a good pace.

"Yeah, let's do that," I agreed. "Wait," when I realized there was one more thing, "what do we do with our two new skill slots?"

"That's right, we have two more now," she opened her menu and I followed. The equipped skill menu opened with a tap and I scanned through the four skills I had so far. If not for our current situation, it would be hard to believe how long it took to increase our stats. We were going on five months trapped in this world, one hundred fifty days, tens of thousands of hours. And it was straight through. Any normal person playing this as a game would never even come close to the point we were at. No wonder why they hadn't accomplished much in the Beta. But even so, with so much time sunk into this already, even our best skills were only slightly up past a quarter of the way to the max level of one thousand. It was time to change that.

"Well, we already have our weapon skills, and changing our specialization now would just confuse things. We have the basic crafting skills we need too... Looks like there are some other crafting fields," as she eyed down the available list, "but I don't want to go into another one right now. That just leaves utility skills. We should start picking them up, because from here on, we'll need to be able to deal with all kinds of situation."

We set our menus to filter everything else out and read through the descriptions of the utility skills for some time, passing info through our bond so we would both know about the ones the other read. The list was incredibly long, covering everything from woodcutting to trade negotiation. Why was there even a skill for that anyway? Shaking off that thought, I looked through the ones that had really stood out to me. Namely, «Hiding» and «Searching», though... not really because I was putting them in high consideration to learn. By their descriptions, they were the 'see things' and 'don't be seen' skills. The thing was, with those PKers still on my mind, the skills stuck out because it seemed like they fit those three. First was the way they had stayed invisible inside the Boss Room on the tenth floor, even while just standing there. The other was just a suspicion. I opened up a message to Argo in order to confirm it.

Searching read that it allowed the one using it to see the cursor of people and monsters at longer distances and with bad visibility and obstacles. What had piqued my interest was the last bit, about obstacles. 『Is it possible for the «Searching» skill to show people through solid objects, like walls?』 After I sent the short message, I reached forward to where the message notification would appear without even waiting. Because as my finger approached, Argo's inhumanly fast response came in, opening before me.

『Not widely known yet, but yes. High level «Searching» will show players, mobs, and such through walls. The estimated proficiency required is 350-360 points. Why are you asking?』 I smiled at the last bit, always fishing for more information, that Argo. I sent a little, 'no reason', in response, since I wasn't about to explain how those men had followed us when we moved through an out of limits area. She put the info on my tab, since she knew I always payed up. I added the fifteen hundred Col to the small pouch on the back of my belt containing what I already owed her, so I could just give it to her the next time I saw her.

"Ok, I figured out how those guys followed us." Onee-chan looked up, surprised, since she was still sorting through the skill list, trying to determine which ones would be the most helpful for now. "The «Searching» skill can track people on the other side of solid objects at high level. They must have used that to watch us moving underground," I explained simply. She nodded, agreeing with my theory.

"Sounds about right. Let's keep that in mind if we ever meet them again. Though honestly, I'd rather tear them apart the next time we met," a frown accented by a downward shift in her eyebrows. When I saw her make that scary face, I felt a bit surprised at the words that came out of my own mouth.

"Yeah, but we'll have to be a lot stronger for that." I guess I wouldn't be getting over it easily either. After hesitating for a few more moments, we both returned to the task at hand, finding suitable skills to fill our two new slots.

"Something like «Extended Weight Limit» would certainly be helpful," the skill would allow us to carry a great deal more than normally possible, "but it really wouldn't make us _stronger_." Onee-chan nodded with my thought.

"I guess that means we should be looking more along the lines of 'combat utility'."

"Mmm, then how about «Acrobatics»?"

"What does that one do again?" she asked, scrolling on her list to find it.

"Basically, increased maneuverability in the air."

Finding it, she read off bits and pieces, "Increased jump height... Enables airborne maneuvering... Balance... This sounds pretty good." She put a hand to her chin, thinking aloud. "Still, I feel like there's only so much we can increase our pure combat strength, at least within a short amount of time. If we want to get any better than that, we'll have to just grind levels for it." Not something either of us was looking forward to. Since level thirty, the requirements for leveling up had increased dramatically, even more so with each subsequent level. Until the mobs started giving better experience awards, grinding would grow more and more inefficient. I imagined that before level forty it would become so bad that it wouldn't even be feasible.

Onee-chan nodded, having followed my thoughts, she fully agreed. "Right now we have one method of avoiding a battle if we can't handle it. Running away. Unfortunately, we can't just run when we're with someone," thinking on it once more.

"What about when there's nowhere to run?" I asked as it came to mind.

"Well, there's that too. So far that hasn't happened, but we'll get killed if we don't plan for it. You can never have enough safety nets," she crossed her arms and gave two big, knowledgeable nods.

"Isn't that what Kirito-san says?" I asked when I recognized the expression.

Falling face first onto the table, she chuckled slightly. "Ahh, you caught me. But still..." becoming serious again, "if we can't fight, and we can't run, what else is there?"

"Hide?" I said automatically. Those were the three basic 'fight or flight' tactics after all, hide, fight and run. Then I realized what I'd just said when I saw Onee-chan staring at me intensely.

We both went back up the list, finding «Hiding» near the top and reading over the skill once more. Basically, it kept others from noticing us, even if we were right in front of them. As long as the conditions were right and our skill was high enough anyway.

"I guess that decides it then." Onee-chan clapped her hands together definitively. I took «Acrobatics» and she took «Hiding».

"One down, lots to go. Next up would be..." thinking, her face darkened and she looked down for a moment. "What to do about our weapons."


	147. Chapter 138

** Haggle Haggle Chapter 138**

_Author Note: Since I only have my laptop at the moment and nothing better to do, I guess I'll start the next chapter. XD_

It was true enough, even if we didn't want to think about it, our dependable weapons had finally failed us. Our massively durable swords, which had taken the equipment-eating fog of the first orb boss for a decent while before we found how to shield them, were now critically damaged, and our daggers were completely gone. We had to find new weapons, that's all there was to it.

I nodded slowly. "I don't think I'll feel comfortable using weapons made by someone else." After we had seriously broken our character data by falling out of the world, the NPC shops wouldn't sell us combat equipment ever since. They seemed to treat us as children, for whatever reason. We'd become smiths ourselves to get past that, but so far we'd only made one set of weapons for ourselves, since we'd happened to have some incredibly rare and even unique, boss dropped equipment to use as a base. Now however, we had no such starting point. Of course we could reforge our swords, but without anything substantial to add, we wouldn't be able to get much improvement out of them. As for our daggers...

"I agree, we can probably find some good stuff to break down for a base, and our rare additional mats might be enough to fill in the gap." Onee-chan offered.

"Well, I guess so, but our daggers are a whole different matter. We'll need to start from scratch there."

"Actually, I was thinking that those arrows we picked up from the seventh floor boss might be some good materials to power up our weapons." That was right, we had picked up a bunch of them. They seemed to be pretty powerful, so maybe that was a good option.

"We have a lot of them, don't we? Let's test them out to see what they do," I suggested. No way we would just add a random item into our precious weapons without the first clue what they did.

"Sounds like a plan, let's get started."

...

Out in the city again, the liveliness from before on the way to the restaurant had all but disappeared. The city had emptied, leaving almost perfect quiet, save for the hum of music which pervaded all the towns in this world. Sitting on our «Vendor's Carpet» with our smithing gear around us, Onee-chan easily forged a simple iron sword, the weakest weapon possible to forge with a single, basic iron ingot. Then she added a single arrow, fired at us(and possibly into us) by that Archer boss on the seventh floor, presumable the guard to keep us from this, the eighth floor, apparently home to the elf race within Aincrad, though there was no way of knowing if we would find more as we continued upward.

Whatever the case, that was in the past now, we had to move forward. The second sword was finished, the weakest which could be made combining the same base material with an arrow. It was Onee-chan's idea. By making a comparison between the weakest and strongest, we would be able to determine just how the arrows affected the finished equipment. In short order, the third sword, strongest available, and finally the fourth, combining the strongest sword with an arrow.

With all four weapons sitting in front of us (all optimized for durability for simplicity's sake), we pulled up the stats to examine the changes. The most obvious change of course, was the special effect it added: extra damage against plant monsters. Well, that was simple enough. Apart from that, there was no real distinguishing factor between the two low-end blades.

However, the same could not be said for the high-end weapons. While the regular one had significantly higher stats than it's weaker counterpart, the difference between the two enhanced swords was even more pronounced. Not only did the stronger of the two have increased stats, but also a different appearance. While not bright or eye-catching, the special blade had green and brown, 'foresty' colors not present on the regular one. The colorations were most noticeable on the hilt, though the blade itself was also tinted a very slight, dull green.

"Looks like it adds some impressive stats," Onee-chan whistled. "Excluding the trash equips, it adds large bonuses to both speed and accurracy, nearly two hundred points on its own," she observed, "even a little bit of damage too." Even with those stat boosts, it didn't add anything to the durability, considered by many to be the 'bad' stat, since it increased the Strength required to wield the weapon, obviously not something you wanted when your focus was on speed and accuracy.

I frowned, "That's fine, but we don't actually need those stats, they do nothing for us."

She nodded. "Yeah, they offer some seriously impressive boosts... but nothing I would add to our own weapons. We could probably trade them for some really nice components we could use though." I immediately agreed. While of no use directly, we could get what we needed with them, without spending a small fortune, to buy the mats at regular price.

"To the frontline then?" I asked, though it wasn't even a question. That's where we would find the stuff we needed. In the meantime, we might also find a smith skilled enough to fix our swords, since the level of damage was beyond our own skills. Neither of us were sure if breaking down a damaged weapon would adversely affect the weapon forged from its ingot. And neither of us wanted to find out. Not with our own weapons at least.

Rising from the carpet, we walked over to the teleport gate, just a short distance away, as we had set up in the plaza, right near entwined trees which served as the gate here.

"Teleport: «Higata»!" we called together, a blue light appearing to envelope us completely When it cleared a few moments later, we found ourselves standing in a relatively more busy square than the one we had just departed. I also noted how the overall green ambiance of the elven forest had changed to neutral gray of human civilization. The fourteenth floor was more like the first, with a decent variety of terrain, as we had seen two days prior on our trip to «Onizumi».

We walked around the square for a minute, looking at the stuff the merchants had laid to draw customers while they worked on whatever they were doing. There were a pretty decent number of them, thirty-three in the main plaza. There were bound to be more spread out through the Chinese themed main city as well. Unlike when we had first decided to be smiths, there wasn't any particular lack in the support class now.

No, there was no lack in weapon smiths, I corrected myself. There were far fewer vendors with armor for show, and I only saw a single spot with regular clothing, on the far side from where we were walking. Of course it was only natural. In this world, weapons were the most important thing. Armor was secondary, though still important, while anything cosmetic was largely viewed as completely unnecessary. We didn't intend to stay here after all.

But still, just how long could we all continue to live in this world without ever feeling like more than visitors? Or inmates anyway. Not that I could speculate really, we hadn't been the most social of people since this all started. The only person more of a loner than us had to be that Kirito. Then again, how much did I really know about him? I hadn't even known he was Klein's friend until the other day.

He certainly does give off that 'loner' vibe though... I thought idly as we walked around, examining the wares on display in search of some telling of a skilled smith. And he's so strong, I wonder how he manages that. Maybe he has a close group of strong friends that I've never seen, and that's how he stays so far ahead? Before these thoughts could continue any further, we both spotted some high level swords laid out and walked up to talk to the owner of the shop.

Looking up from the equipment which had caught our eyes, we both found ourselves surprised to see a girl. An actual girl. She had short cut brown hair and some plain blue overalls forming a basic 'worker' figure, and was hammering away with a look of intense focus. It was a rather strange look that I hadn't seen on many faces, since there was no real need for focus while smithing. It only required you swing your hammer. She looked so intent on her work that we stood and watched, not wanting to interrupt before she finished.

Out of habit, I counted the strikes, twenty-four in total since we came, though there was no way of knowing how many times she had struck it before we had arrived. Finally, the ingot went through its transformation, turning into a clean, straight bladed weapon. It didn't look like much, but it was a nice, sturdy sword.

The female smith tapped the blade and the info window appeared above it. "Not bad," she noted, waving it away again. A hand rose up, wiping away a slight bit of sweat on her forehead while she flopped down backward, letting out a tired sigh. Finally, as if she felt our gazes fixed on her, she turned. "Eh?!" The girl let out a surprised gasp when she saw us standing there, falling backward to lean on her hands. She kept that position for a few moments, her eyes running up and down us rapidly.

It was a reminder just how strange we looked. Just being surprised that we were there was no reason to look at us like that. Between us actually being girls, and our fancy kimonos, it took her nearly five seconds to stop staring and shoot back to her feet.

"Hi, my name is Lizbeth. I,is there something you two are looking for?" bowing awkwardly a few times while she spoke.

"We're looking to trade crafting materials," Onee-chan opened smoothly. "We have some very high grade mats which give a moderate increase in attack, do not effect durability, and give large bonuses to both speed and accuracy." She stopped for a moment, then just remembering, added on, "and it also gives bonus damage against plant mobs."

A somewhat lopsided grin crossed the girl, Lizbeth's face. "That... sounds too good to be true... honestly." I found myself raising an eyebrow when she said that, though when I actually thought about it for a moment, it did sound too good, didn't it?

"Aah! It's actually true," Onee-chan waved her hands with an apologetic look. "Here, since it's not a normal mat, we made some a couple test weapons to see what it would do. I can show you the difference if you like?" Lizbeth nodded once, and we stepped onto her carpet. She sat on one side, and we sat on the other, legs folded beneath us. That was when I heard the muttering which traveled through the crowd.

"You see that?"

"Three girls in one place, am I dreaming?"

"Oh my god, they're Twins!"

"Dude, you see those kimonos?"

"What do you think they're doing?" Looks like we were the center of attention already. I glanced to either side without turning my head, noting that everyone seemed to be craning their heads to look at us. My attention returned to our own affairs when the swords began to materialize on the carpet beneath us.

Onee-chan pointed out the differences we had noticed, how the changes were far less noticeable on weaker weapons, while they stood out and had a large impact on a powerful weapon. She was the smith, so I let her go over it all, contenting myself to listen, though I found the stares of the crowd distracting. I thought to her that we would need some new cloaks, because we still drew far too much attention to ourselves. Onee-chan added a big nod to her speech, though it was intended for me.

After a couple minutes, when she had finished going over everything, Lizbeth looked decently convinced. Though, that look then changed to suspicion before she asked, "So... If these mats are so good, why aren't you going to use them yourselves?"

To that, Onee-chan shook her head slowly, eyes closed until she said, "We make heavier weapons, with a focus on damage and durability. While these are good, they aren't good _for us_.

Seeming satisfied with that answer, Lizbeth then asked, "Can I see this mat? How many do you have?"

"That's right," opening her inventory once more, Onee-chan answered, "we have eighty-four of them," before retrieving one. The 『Woodland Arrow』 appeared in her palm and she held it out for Lizbeth to take and inspect. However, the brown haired girl just looked at it, her head cocked to the side slightly.

"An arrow? Why an arrow? There aren't any bows, so where would you even get this?"

"It actually came from the seventh floor boss," scratching the back of her head, "that's why I don't think there will be any more of them."

"They're Boss Drops?" Lizbeth's jaw fell open.

"No no, they aren't. That Boss was an elven archer, these are the arrows it fired during the battle. We pulled them out of the walls and floor and... whatnot." What Lizbeth didn't know was that the 'whatnot' was our bodies. I couldn't help the mild shiver that came with that memory.

"Is that so... Well, I'm not about to pass on an opportunity like this. How much do you want?"

"Actually, we were hoping to trade for some high quality mats for damage and durability. Do you have anything like that?"

Shaking her head slowly, Lizbeth answered, "I focus on speedy, accurate swords, so I don't keep anything high level enough to be a match for that, not for those stats."

"I see... Still, I guess we could sell them. It would kind of be a pain to explain everything again to someone else, especially if they didn't even believe us and wouldn't buy them."

"Why are you willing to trust us anyway?" I interrupted when Onee-chan made me think of something. "Even with what we showed you, you wouldn't know if we had used a higher level base ingot, or added other special mats to make the ones with the arrows seem better..."

"Did you?" she asked, though her voice had a ring of happiness to it.

"N,no! Of course not! We would never do something like that." I said adamantly.

"Heh," a little grin touched her lips, "of course I thought of those things. But... you seem to be very honest people. And believe me, I'm not one to trust easily!" she puffed up her chest as she said that, though I wasn't sure if it was actually a good thing. "Besides, you have to be the most straightforward people I've ever seen, wearing outfits like that," she giggled.

"Haaahh..." I let out a long breath. "I was just regretting that a minute ago..." I gave another sideways glance, the merchants my gaze swept over quickly turning away. Lizbeth let out a choked giggle, her face saying she was trying not to laugh.

"Besides," Lizbeth's tight-lipped 'trying not to laugh' look gave way to a big smile. "Us girls have to help each other out, right?"

"Ah." Closed my eyes and smiled, feeling a tinge of heat spread over my cheeks. Us girls, huh?

Following that, Onee-chan and Lizbeth negotiated a price. Of course since it was a rare item, there was no set standard, so they just went off the general prices for items in the same category, though Onee-chan was really very lenient with the pricing. In the end, they settled on a nice round five thousand Col per arrow, making it four hundred twenty thousand Col in total. From the look on her face when she transferred the money, that was probably a good deal, if not most of Lizbeth's savings. Though, when she looked at the arrows in her inventory, a her smile appeared again. Making weapons with those arrows, she should easily be able to recoup what she had spent on them.

"Ah, I just thought of something," Lizbeth said suddenly, just as we were about to excuse ourselves. We both tilted our heads, wondering what it could be, and she let out a short giggle before going on. "You said these were from the seventh floor boss, why are you just selling them now?" she asked.

When we both hesitated for a few moments, her eyebrow shifted upward. After letting out a long sigh, Onee-chan explained. "Well, we've been holding onto them because we didn't really know what to do with them, kind of like a lot of the stuff we're carrying," letting out a short chuckle with the last part. "Except, just the other day, we got in a fight we weren't ready for..."

"'Got in a fight'? That's a strange way of saying it."

"Eh?" we both froze when she said that.

"If it was an ambush by monsters, no one would refer to it as 'getting into a fight'. That must mean..." her eyes widened and she stopped for a moment. "Pkers?" Neither of us could bring ourselves to answer, but I'm sure the looks on our faces were answer enough. "W,well, leaving aside how it happened, what was the result?" Lizbeth let out the flustered words to urge us on.

"Well, you see, we fought, but we weren't strong enough to win. And our weapons... weren't strong enough to survive."

"Is that so..." Lizbeth commented.

"Actually, Lizbeth, what is your «Metal Working» proficiency, if I may ask?"

After the guarded expression which would naturally follow asking on any of her stats, she puffed up her chest and answered, "Three hundred twelve points." My mouth opened slightly in surprise at first. Ours was only two hundred forty-three. Her level was that much higher than ours? No, that's to be expected. We split our time between clearing, farming, and crafting. She was an actual support class, of course she would practice her crafting much more than us, so her level was bound to be higher.

"In that case, could you take a look at our swords? They had incredibly high durability, so they were at least able to survive, just barely. The damage is so extensive that we can't even repair them ourselves."

"Sure, I'll see what I can do. Can I see the swords?" After another brief hesitation, we both drew our precious, battered swords. When the weapons slid from our sheaths, looking like they'd been to hell and back, cracked, chipped, and mine with the blade fully broken off, not only Lizbeth, but most of the crowd watching let out a collective gasp.

"Even becoming like this, they didn't give in. If they had, we wouldn't be here now," Onee-chan explained with a dark look on her face.

"I see..." she first took my sister's sword, running her hand slowly up and down the fractured blade. "With some decent mats, I could fix this up," she said after a short examination. Then she took mine. After examining the weapons with an intense look on her face for a minute, she opened its information window. "Wait, you made these yourselves?" she asked, her face snapping back to us. We both nodded. "Ahh..." returning to reading the information, she eventually said, "these aren't that bad in terms of damage, but they're so heavy and their speed is so low, they shouldn't even be useable. Are you sure you want to go through the trouble of repairing them? I don't know how you could have managed up until now. I have some swords that are clearly better in my-"

"No, it absolutely has to be those swords!" I interrupted, "they're special... to us," I added, not wanting to go into their peculiar special abilities with so many people listening in on our conversation, "you know?" That special ability had already proved to be invaluable. We never would have found Ferin if not for that ability. Even more than the weapons themselves, we needed to be able to use that.

"So that's it, you're the kind that always keep the same sword, upgrading it each time." It wasn't a question, but we nodded anyway. "You could always break them down and reforge them, but if you do it to something like this, holding up the broken blade, "Nothing good will come out when you forge it. Since that's the case, I'm going to need a lot of high-grade mats if you want me to repair these. But remember, even after I repair them, they won't be the same as they used to be, not after damage like this. The only option will be to break them down." We both nodded.

"That's what we intended to do anyway."

With our business here wrapped up for now, she returned my sword. She gave us a list of all the materials we would need to repair the weapons, then we added each other as friends so we could get in touch once we gathered what we needed. It was only then that we realized we'd never given our names, and quickly introduced ourselves. With a quick farewell, we stood up, turning around. It was a bit funny how everyone else in the plaza suddenly found the ground, sky, or the buildings opposite of us extremely interesting. With a wave backward, we walked off.

Now we just had to find that stuff...

_A totally unrelated though that just occurred to me: In episode 8, when Asuna fell on Kirito out of the teleport gate, just how did he manage to get his hand under that tight breast plate of hers to grope her by accident? O_O_

_(Because these are the things that go through my mind while write this. XD)_


	148. Chapter 139

**Buyer's Plight**** Chapter 139**

_Random note: That's weird, it isn't written anywhere in that section that she forgot to equip her breastplate. Did they mention it somewhere else?_

_At the moment, I'm also considering it to be Kirito's Harem Shenanigans. :P_

After leaving the blacksmith Lizbeth's shop, we walked around again in search of someone selling materials. Buying and selling mats could be a decently profitable business if handled correctly, and a gold mine if you had a knack for it. Needless to say, there were quite a few of them, especially since there was always a demand, though most were on in town, backed by shops and inns, instead of the main plaza where most of the craftsmen had set up shop. So we walked through the town, checking each mat dealer we crossed in search of the both the items required to repair our swords, and high level mats for upgrading them when we reforged the weapons.

Finding the basic stuff, like iron and steel ingots to repair Onee-chan's sword was easy, we had that done after the first stall. The problem was, well, everything else. A lot of the stuff on Lizbeth's list was apparently extremely rare, with incredibly low drop rates, limited mobs that dropped them, or both. So we had to keep searching, and it took quite a while to pick up almost everything. So long in fact, that the evening bell suddenly rang out, alerting us to the fact that the day was almost over already.

In response, we stopped at some guy's shop who seemed to have just started as a cook. Tossing him some Col, we ordered whatever he made, and got something that looked like brown stew. It was a mixture of bitter and salty that I couldn't really call it good, but it filled our stomachs. Having customers would allow him to continue his chosen trade, so he would eventually get better, serving good food later on. At least that's what I hoped for now, trying to forget about the thick taste stuck in my mouth.

We had gone through a lot of Col to cover most of the list, however, there were still a few items left that we hadn't found. In all, we were still missing a 『Rough Black Steel Plate』, 『Mellon Pebble』, and 『Ivory Chunk』. I was about to ask Argo where we could find the items when Onee-chan pointed out that everyone was coming back from the field. Maybe they someone had found what we needed and were going to sell it today anyway.

"That's a good idea, let's go check!" I nodded quickly and we set off for the main plaza again. It took a little longer with the crowd beginning to pick up, but there was still a flood rushing in from both the town gates and «Teleport Gate», since this was the biggest place to shop. Funny how that worked. All the shops were here, because it's where the frontliners were, who needed their services. Meanwhile, the frontliners came here because this is where the shops were that they needed. Strange how that worked out...

While my mind was wandering vague topics, Onee-chan took out a large pad of paper and wrote down the three items we were looking for in big letters. She then held it up for everyone passing by to see. Unsurprisingly, the method was very effective. Well, sort of. After somehow finding us among the entire crowd immediately upon entering the plaza, everyone's eyes turned to the pad of paper she was holding in the air. The bell sounds of menus opening suddenly multiplied as practically everyone in the area checked if they had what we needed. Yet somehow, none of them had the items, or at least no one approached us to try and sell them.

Still, even as the jumble of motion suddenly continued, as if the batteries that had temporarily shorted out came back to life, more people were spilling into the large circle. Everyone who glanced past us would immediately check their menu, so I was fairly sure they were looking to see if they had what we needed. But still, it turned up nothing. We continued to wait as the influx diminished, and finally vanished. When it had been a full minute without anyone new entering the area, I lowered the paper in my hands (handed to me at some point in the middle).

"I guess it's no good. Option B? Ask Argo and go get them ourselves?"

Onee-chan nodded slowly. "We'll need some temporary weapons then."

"Yeah, depending on the mobs that carry them. If they're just small fries, we can probably get by just kicking them to death with «Martial Arts»." That received another small nod. Though now that I thought about it, we had learned that skill by accident and never had any intention to use it. We hadn't even trained it, even a little bit. Even so, it had somehow proven invaluable in the fight against the Black Coffin. Normal weapons skills were all for slashing and dealing damage, but lacked any sort of reasonable knockback. Those unarmed skills had been great for knocking them back and stunning them, probably the only reason we had escaped with our lives. It would probably be in our best interest to train that some from now on...

That train of thought trailed off when Onee-chan opened up a message to Argo, starting to type out our request. I watched over her shoulder as she typed out the question, then pressed send.

That's when something unusual happened. As the message window vanished, the bright yellow icon denoting a new message appeared in both of our fields of vision (we shared messages like our inventory) and we both jumped in surprise. Even Argo wasn't _that_ fast, she shouldn't even have gotten the message by the time she replied. Strangely enough, the icon flashed a moment later, meaning we'd gotten a second new message. Was the first from someone else then?

Tapping the yellow figure, two windows appeared before me, both labeled as coming from Argo. I had to check the timestamp, marked just under the sender, to figure out which one she sent first before reading them. 『Asuna is looking for you. She wasn't willing to pay for your location, so she told me to pass the message along. Sending a response will cost two thousand five hundred Col.』 Asuna? What did she want right now anyway? I was about to reply, but found my eyes drawn over to her second message before I pressed the button. 『The only monsters that drop those are near the sealed dungeon entrance on the fourteenth floor. The metal comes from a human swordsman type, the 『Violent Lashers』, the other two can be found on the flying deer in in the area just north of there, dropped by 『Winged Stags』. —Ten thousand Col.』

While adding the charges onto what I already owed Argo, which was growing to quite a lot of Col now, I thought up a suitable reply to Asuna's message, only now realizing that we had never added her back to our friend list all the way back when that man recreated our character data. "First thing I'll do when we see her," I grumbled while typing out a short message, for her to relay to Asuna that we would wait for her in our shop on the eighth floor. After sending the message off, we got on our way back to the «Teleport Gate». If we said we would be waiting for her, it would certainly be bad if she arrived first. So we pushed quickly through the crowded hub town in order to teleport back to the relatively empty «Friben» of the eighth floor.

Planning ahead as we walked, I figured that after meeting Asuna, we would probably retire for the night. As it turned out, getting those mats would require fighting strong frontline mobs. Those weren't the kind of enemies we could simply stomp to death. For them, we would need swords. That meant finding suitable temporary ones, and even with them, I had doubts about fighting on the frontlines at night in such a condition. It would make a lot more sense to go get them once the sun rose again tomorrow.

With that in mind, we called the teleport command to take us back to our current home base floor, finding our «Vendor's Carpet» still sitting right where we left it hours earlier. Even if we were hoping to avoid it, I couldn't be surprised when I saw the cloaked figure standing just in front of the carpet, its backside against the wall of a restaurant facing the adjacent street. Given that there were only two more in the square, and were currently occupied, she would of course know that this one belonged to us.

"Hi, Asuna-san, guess you beat us here," Onee-chan waved her hand while offering the greeting to the hooded girl's back, causing her to pull a full one-eighty to face us.

"Ah, you're here," was all that came out of her mouth at first.

"Well yeah, though it looks like we're a little late," I scratched my head, "sorry for making you wait on us."

When she didn't respond in a few seconds, Onee-chan moved the conversation on, asking, "So what did you-"

"Waitwaitwait!" I interrupted. "We have to add you as a contact again," I exclaimed, only having remembered it now.

"Ah, that's right," Onee-chan noted on a whim. After the simple procedure, she cleared her throat and continued. "As I was saying, why did you contact us?"

Asuna opened her mouth to speak, but stopped a just before beginning. I couldn't be sure, but it looked like a slight blush touched her cheeks before she shook her head a little and started again. "A little while ago, I found a drop sword to replace the one you made for me, but on this new floor, that weapon is no good anymore. I held onto the «Sunbeam» you made. I was wondering if you could could please upgrade it for me," ending the last part with a deep bow.

"Of cour-" we both started, but halfway through, the same though occurred to us.

"A,actually, if you want your sword reforged, I would recommend going to see the smith Lizbeth on the fourteenth floor. Unlike us, she specializes in fast, accurate weapons, and we sold her some rare mats for just that only a few hours ago. She should still be on at her shop in the central square right now. Just tell her we sent you, and she'll definitely take care of you." Onee-chan slowly explained these things to a dubious looking Asuna. After thinking for a minute longer, she finally gave one quick nod, the fast motion causing her chestnut hair to sway with an audible swish.

"Then, thank you for your time, I will follow your advice," Asuna said in an oddly formal way. She turned around and started to walk back toward the «Teleport Gate», when Onee-chan suddenly called out to her.

"Hey, Asuna-san! I just thought of something." The taller girl turned halfway back around to look at us while Onee-chan trotted over to her. "You were probably farming up on the frontline today, right?" She nodded easily, though her face said she had no idea where this was going. "Then, have you sold your drops yet?" Asuna shook her head this time, her expression unchanged. "We're actually looking for some items dropped by those mobs, could you check if you have any of them? We'll can pay," she tagged onto the end so Asuna would know we weren't just trying to scam her or something.

"Oh ok, if that's all it is..." she mumbled while opening her inventory menu. Onee-chan listed the three items and Asuna searched through her items, surprisingly turning up two of the ones we needed. After being completely dumbfounded by her having two, when a hundred or more people hadn't even had one back in «Higata», I thought back to Argo's information, and the reason immediately seemed obvious. The 『Melon Pebble』 and 『Ivory Chunk』 Asuna had were both dropped by the flying mob 『Winged Stag』. From our past experiences with Asuna, I remembered that she was one of the only people who regularly fought against flying mobs, probably to refine her own abilities against the enemies which much more agile than land-bound mobs.

"Aah..." I let out the low sound as I realized all of this. I couldn't help the small smirk that touched my lips when I also realized that it was this kind of thinking that had gained Argo her reputation as the best information dealer around, by following one bit of info, using it to infer more, and more after that. That is to say, with the information present, Argo would easily conclude that Asuna had been fighting against those 『Wings Stags』 today.

But then again, something like this would probably be child's-play to the information dealer. I'm sure she was much more skilled, that inferring such a thing would be natural. It would take something much more obscure to even make her think, though I obviously couldn't come up with such a situation on my own right now, because I obviously was not as skilled as her.

While I was wheeling through these unimportant thoughts, the other two girls had finished the deal, and Asuna set off again. With that finished, Onee-chan came and plopped back down on our carpet. Having stood during the conversation with Asuna, I lowered myself onto the plush red surface as well, no different today than when we had first borrowed it from Argo a few months ago.

Looking at the items within our inventory, Onee-chan spoke. "Just one more item." I nodded slowly, my gaze fixed on the two entwined tree trunks ahead, spiraling around each other as they rose to the high canopy of leaves above. The trees which formed the «Teleport Gate» on this floor. No particular thoughts went through my mind as I simply stared ahead. It was probably because I was getting tired, it was already dark and we had done a lot of talking today, going to all those shops.

It was much more tiring than farming mobs all day. Why was that? Just because I hadn't had practice doing it before? No, I would say it was more that I wasn't really suited for it from the beginning. Even back when this all began, knowing that death could come for us at any time, we had traveled out into the field on the second day, intent on slaying those potentially deadly monsters without a second thought.

No, even that wasn't right. All the way back then- here I was thinking of it that way, as if it had been in some distant past, when it happened less than a half year prior. Sighing with a little smile, I continued my thought. Back then, the threat of death was just vague and held no weight. I clearly hadn't thought of it seriously at the time. But then again, even now... Did it feel any more of a threat now as it did back then?

While I would liked to have said 'certainly!' that really wasn't the case. Even now, I could count the times I had seriously considered the possibility of death on my hands. To jog my own memory, I counted them off. One, fighting the 『Great Boar Lord』 for the first time. Two, being chased by those wolves through the forest. Three... when nothing immediately came to mind, I skipped over the vague memories of events from the beginning on forward, the boar, the wolves, ...—?!

No, there was something else there. My train of though derailing all at once, I knew there was something about the wolves, catching in my memory, trying to remind me of something. It was important, and I fought to recall just what. We'd gone to the temple, gotten the «Blessed Twins» skill, taken the crystal, awakened the demon wolf, and run for our lives. After somehow getting back to town, we found that the area would soon come under attack. Tracing over the thoughts vaguely, recalling sights, places, names- Diabel... Shaking off the dark feeling that came with remembering our now-deceased friend from those first days, I continued on.

We met Klein there, already with the makings of the Fuurinkazan guild, far before the System actually supported guilds. We met with the all the strongest people in an attempt to plan for the coming attack, but it had been a complete failure when the wolves attacked. We had left that clearing, moving to the city, where we found the demon wolf and slew it.

No, I had stepped over whatever was tugging at my memory. Going more slowly, I traced the events backward. The wolf's ranting maybe? What had it said exactly? Even when I thought deeply on it, I couldn't remember the actual words. I could only remember that it had said we were reincarnations of the original Blessed Twins, though was obviously not true. Although... did it say that during the fight, or earlier, when we first released it? Shaking my head slightly, I couldn't remember. However, that wasn't what I was looking for anyway.

Then further back... Our first change of clothes, we had picked up some basic leather armor, right? The people with us were Heathcliff, Klein, and Diabel, with Klein's guild backing us up. Hmmm, Heathcliff was worried about his bird? Still nothing. When we left the clearing... nothing in particular even came to mind there. Wait, didn't we stop in the woods? No, I don't think we really discussed anything then, did we? Moving past that, there was when the wolves attacked. Back then, I had been the one to decide that we had to fight the Boss. I could still remember that part clearly, it was the first time I had made a tough decision here.

Feeling the tug of that one detail I was trying to remember, I tried searching deeper into that topic. When we left the clearing, who had come with us? Again, it was just Heathcliff, Diabel, Klein and his friends. No no no, turning it around, I looked at it the other way. Who _hadn't_ come with us? None of their names jumped out at me, instead was an entirely different memory altogether. Quite some time later, I'd messaged Argo about it. No one in that field had survived the attack. That must mean that the other leaders we left behind at that time had died there.

Frowning, I continued to beat my brain against the memory. Something there wasn't right. They had really all died after we left? None of them fled when it was obvious they couldn't win? No, I'm sure some would have tried, but those wolves were fast and there was nowhere safe for them to run to. Again, that meant that all the leaders we met there had died. I tried to pull their names from the recesses of my memory. After some time doing this, the first one came to me, a name I recognized from some old an anime I watched when I was a kid. Master Throne. Finally managing to pull one, the name immediately connected to the others related with it.

The related names came up, their voices replaying in my mind as they had all introduced themselves. Master Throne, Johnny Black, Heathcliff, Kengo, PoH, River, Red-Eyed Xaxa, Yuu, and Klein. Once that thought moved through my mind, I finally realized the significance. That's what had been tugging at my memory.

That was when we first met PoH.

With the memory refreshed in my mind, I let the whole rest of it play out. How I'd first noticed the cursors and hp bars of others, our recount of releasing the demon, the discussion about how to patrol the perimeter... Though, it seemed that my mind had started wandering then. Searching ahead a little, I'd focused again when the one in the middle... River, had showed us a message he'd gotten. That was when everything went to hell, with the giant demon wolf flying out of nowhere and eating River. Everything that followed was as I'd remembered.

Thinking that, there was just one more thing that stuck in my mind. PoH staring, shell-shocked at River's disintegrating body in the wolf's mouth. Could that be it, the reason he'd become a PKer? Had that single incident, back in those first few days, made him snap?

Well, not that it really mattered now. Whatever had happened to him and the other two, they were nothing more than murderers now. Serial killers might even be a better term for them. Still, they had stayed back in the clearing, where even Argo had said that everyone died. And Argo was never wrong.

No, they definitely survived that. All those wolves, and all those people trapped there as well, amongst that, those three had somehow survived. Remembering the completely ludicrous amount of exp given by those wolves, it suddenly made perfect sense how those three could be so absurdly powerful. We had made it up around level twenty or so before anyone else had gotten near ten, with the boost those first couple wolves. That bonus ended up being almost completely reset the first time Kayaba had taken it upon himself to mess with our character data. If not for that, just what level would we be now? Thirty-five?

More that that, what about those three who must have killed tens of them to escape with their lives, without ever having their power kept in check?

I had no idea what sort of implications went along with the things I had just thought over, simply sitting there and continuing to stare at the entwined trees ahead of me. A light sensation on my shoulder, coming out of nowhere practically made me jump out of my skin. Looking over, I blinked a few times at Onee-chan, sitting next to me. She wasn't looking at me, also staring off into the distance as she spoke.

"You sure have become a chatterbox these last few days, with yourself anyway."

Flailing my hands around, I started rambling, "Wait, ahh, but, that's not-" before she turned and placed a finger against my lips, stopping my words with just that.

"It's a complement," she giggled then continued, "because you stopped to really think, you remembered something very important. She removed her finger, using that hand to pat my head, and I smiled, despite the hot feeling spreading all across my cheeks. "Come on now though, it's time for bed."

"Huh?" Swiping down with my left hand, I glanced at the time. 8:37!? Just how long had I been off in a daze exactly?

"Hehe, don't worry about that now. Come on." Gently wrapping one hand around my back, she hooked it under my armpit and we stood, pulling me up with her.

"Onee-chan, I can stand on my own you know," I complained as she did that.

"True true," was her only response before we retrieved our «Vendor's Carpet» and headed off for the night.


	149. Chapter 140

**Repairs**** Chapter 140**

When we woke up the next day, we had a quick breakfast before setting out. Running to the «Teleport Gate», we warped up to the fourteenth floor and immediately set out toward the dungeon, looking up at the sky to figure on a direction. It wasn't that far, but we still arrived at another town, apparently the frontline town on this floor, before reaching it. Checking the sign at the gate, it turned out to be called «Shrra». We passed through the still sleepy town, a few people just beginning to rise with the sun. Once out on the opposite side of the small town, in the interest of saving a bit of money after the spending spree the day before, which had run us upward of seven hundred thousand Col for all the rare items we needed, we equipped the low level iron swords we had made.

It took a bit of time to find the exact location of the dungeon entrance, the gate still shut tight, its puzzle unsolved in the four days since we had first opened this floor. The dungeon wasn't the source of our interest though, as we passed by, making for the area Argo had described in her message. We would only need to defeat one of those swordsman monsters to get the item we needed. Finding the area where they stood with no apparent purpose, we approached slowly, cautiously, until we managed to draw agro from just one.

After luring it a short distance away, the rest was easy. Well, sort of. For the next half hour or so, we stood there beating it with our crap iron swords as it was unable to even fight back against us both. Bit by bit, the weapons so weak we may have killed it faster by trying to choke it to death (I'm pretty sure if we don't have to breath, the mobs don't either) wore away its single hp bar until it finally fell. The swords were totally trashed too, just from us beating on that mob. But still, we found what we were looking for, and got on our way back. It had taken us so long to kill that one mob that we actually passed entire groups of people who had made their way out here in the meantime.

A quick run from one town to the next, and we arrived back in «Higata» right around 7:00 in the morning. Now all that was left was getting our swords repaired so they would be ready for reforging. With our timing, we managed to miss the worst of the morning rush on either side, which was nice because we wouldn't have to deal with all of the usual slack-jawed onlookers we got at such times.

It was still quite early, a time that anyone other than the crazily early rising clearers would still be asleep, but we decided to ask Lisbeth if she was awake anyway. Once we finished repairing the swords, we still had a lot ahead of us. Most importantly was gathering all sorts of stuff to use for their upgrades. Not an easy task without the ability to just go and farm the mats ourselves. Still more than that, was that we had no idea just what sort of mats we were looking for.

In reality, the latter was much easier remedied, though unfortunately it would cost us. Sitting on a bench, we discussed which course of action would leave us less poor. On one hand, we could buy the mats since we couldn't farm them. On the other, we could buys swords, to enable us to farm them ourselves. The second plan would, unfortunately require a good chunk of Col going to Argo for information.

Although, Onee-chan then pointed out that we would probably have to buy information on the mats anyway, just to know what we were looking for. Also, even though Swords were a major big-ticket item, a whole bunch of rare mats would probably outweigh that anyway. I had to think about it for a minute, estimating very round price ranges for the items, but arrived at the same conclusion. Coming to an aggreement, we first sent Argo a message. 『Argo, can we get a list of the absolute strongest mats for upgrading damage and durability? Also, the mobs that drop them and where they can be found?』

I let the yellow icon in my vision blink for the time being. With our next course of action planned out, we sent the message to Lisbeth to see if she was awake yet, a reply coming back rather quickly reading, 『Of course!』, then noting that she was back at her shop. Well, at for her to have such a high level in «Metal Working», she must have gotten up early a lot, so I guess it made sense.

We were already in the city, so it only took a minute to head over to the main plaza and meet Lisbeth back at her shop. "Good morning Lisbeth," Onee-chan greeted the yawning blacksmith with a raised hand.

"Mornin'," after another yawn, Lisbeth asked, "back already?" We both nodded at the same time.

"Haahh? You got all that stuff already? ...I don't even want to know what it cost you... You really love those swords, don't you?"

"Yeah, we would be dead a hundred times over by now without them," Onee-chan giggled, but then her face dropped as the implications of her own words hit her.

"A,ahh... That's right..." Lisbeth replied awkwardly with a sort of worried expression on her face. "Then let's get to it!" We both gave another big nod and handed over all of the necessary materials. One her carpet, she separated some into a small pile, and others into a big one.

From there, each pile was put into the furnace to create an ingot. Lisbeth placed these ingots on top of the damage sword blades on her anvil. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw her lift her blacksmith hammer the first time, thinking there was no way the sword could survive a hit like that. Before I knew it, I was on top of the anvil, holding up my hands between her and the sword.

The girl stood there looking at me with a totally clueless look, blinking a couple times at the pained expression on my face before going, "Oooohhh. This won't damage your swords, there's no need to worry." She gave me a reassuring smile while Onee-chan gently led my by the elbow back to where I was sitting before.

"Now, here I go," she said calmly. A few quick strikes into the ingot, lying atop the blade, and it released a strong glow, sinking into the blade. Watching closely, I could see some of the large cracks through the blade disappear. From there, she walked over to the small grinding stone squished between her furnace and the wall of the inn behind her open-air shop. We had one ourselves, but we'd never actually needed to use it since our weapons had been so durable and would naturally repair the tiny amount of damage they received while unequipped. She worked, grinding the blade against the stone for a minute or so, before setting it back on the carpet and repeating the process with my sword. Surprisingly, when she hammered the ingot into the broken blade, the actual straight blade of the weapon reformed, though it was obviously still damaged.

With both weapons 'repaired', Lisbeth told us carefully, "Remember, you can't use these weapons in combat. The damage can't be repaired and will accumulate until they shatter. They suffered the Effect of being «Broken», that damage can't be fixed completely. All I did was patch them up so you won't get a penalty while reforging them. Got it?" To her serious face, we both earnestly said that we understood.

I mean, even if she hadn't said a word I wouldn't want to use these in combat anymore. Even after the repairs, the damage was evident. Both weapons were still fissured and cracked all over. They just didn't look like they were an inch away from falling apart now. After thanking her many times, we started to get up. But on a whim, I asked if she'd seen Asuna last night.

Lisbeth nodded, saying that she'd asked for her to reforge her rapier, and that they had recommended Lisbeth to do it. She thanked us, but then with a confused look, asked why we would recommend our customer to a different blacksmith.

After thinking for a minute, Onee-chan explained. "Hmm, I guess you could say it's more about helping people than making money for us. We want to make sure everyone can get the strongest weapon to back them up. And you would obviously make her a better sword than we would right now. You know?"

"Aahh." Lisbeth gave us a big smile and thanks, but then a rather awkward, disconcerted look replaced it. She pinched a lock of her brown hair, rubbing it between her fingers while she looked at it, apparently thinking about something unpleasant. But as soon as we asked, she suddenly jumped up, waving her hands and saying "No, don't worry about it. It's nothing!"

"Well, if you say so..." Onee-chan raised a suspicious eyebrow, but we were done here and had lots more to do, so we excused ourselves.

"Next up, finding some swords..." I mumbled.

_Author Note: Ok, I'll end it here. Especially since it took so long to write just this much._

_All blame goes to Baughn and Quickshot for distracting me with irc and Ar Tonelico! T-T But a big, huge thanks as well for giving tons of technical advice. o/_


	150. Cheatsheet 9

—

«»

『』

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

March 8 – Wednesday Tenth Floor Clear

March 18 – Saturday Eleventh Floor Clear

March 25 – Saturday Twelfth Floor Clear

April 3 – Monday Thirteenth Floor Clear

exp 2016800

col 2457850

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

One-handed Sword 296

Sp: 883114

Sprint 264

Sp: 704500

Battle Healing 259

Sp: 675500

Acrobatics 1

Sp: 0

Dagger 284

Sp: 814494

Metal Working 243

Sp: 595500

Metal Refining 256

Sp: 660000

Tailoring 225

Sp: 512520

Cloth Refining 146

Sp: 216000

Hiding 1

Sp: 0

Martial Arts 8

Sp: 803

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

# E Note

Nagajuban 2 2 Goes under kimono – silver

Twilight Kimono 2 2 Purple at top, fades to pink at bottom – high defensive stats

Aurora Obi 2 2 Blue with aurora and star patterns – high defensive stats

Hashi(Ties) 4 4 Keep the kimono in on and in place – white

Obiage 2 2 Scarf-like decoration for obi – silver

Obijime 2 2 String decoration for obi – white

Veiled Wayfinder 2 2 10S 10D – mainly black – Broken

Mark of Bravery 1 0 Has a lion head on hilt.

Iron Swor different low level iron swords

A bunch of rare mats xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was- no charge left

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

Red Orb 1 0 Red orb from floor 1- first orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Yellow Orb 1 0 Yellow orb from floor 2- second orb to unlock Ferin's cave

blessed twins shard of power I 75

50% full

Current Friend List:

Argo

Asuna

Lizbeth

Thinker

Vale

Level chart

30 120000 1740000-1860000

31 1 125000 1860000-1985000

32= 2 131000 1985000-2116000

33 3 138000 216000-2254000

34 5 147000 2254000-2401000

35 8 159000 2401000-2560000

36 13 176000 2560000-2736000

37 21 201000 2736000-2937000

38 34 239000 2937000-3176000

39 55 298000 3176000-3474000

40 89 391000 3474000-3865000

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

Sliding Dash – charge type – fast slide forward ~5 meters – thrust attack

Blitz – short range, high power downward slash from the shoulder

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

Rebound – defensive skill – 3hit- upward slant, horizontal, downward slant – very fast w/ short delay

Town Names to Remember:

Starting City – 1 hub

Horunka – 1

Tolbana – 1 frontline

Urbus – 2 hub

Serof – 3 hub

Reu – 5 hub

Pala – 6 hub

Regg – 6 frontline

Shaen – 6

Finreo – 7 hub

Maren – 7

Friben – 8 hub

Cetiose – 10 hub

Sythum – 10 frontline

Taft – 11 hub

Higata – 14 hub

Shrra – 14 frontline

Onizumi – 14

-Special Equipment Forged-

«Veiled Wayfinder» – Rei&Rai – 3rd floor – In use

«Harmonious Convoy – Rei& Rai – 3rd floor – Destroyed

«Sunbeam» – Asuna – 6th floor – ?

«Mark of Bravery» – Vale – 7th floor – not in use

«Twilight Kimono» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

«Aurora Obi» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four is in the deepest pit of the darkest cavern. You must travel to the land of Earth. Through the Southern mountains, descend into the endless ravine. You must continue to fall, all the way to the bottom. Only there will you find 『The Master of Earth』. Defeat it to claim the second orb. But beware, descending into the caverns is the easy part. They will fight to keep what they have claimed.』

-3-

?

-4-

?


	151. Chapter 141

**Haru**** Chapter 141**

"Next up, finding some swords..." I mumbled.

Onee-chan nodded. Since NPC shops still wouldn't sell us battle gear, we would have to buy the swords from another smith. Of course, that was when the most obvious though occurred to me. "Wait, doesn't Lisbeth sell-"

"Hey there!" a young voice cut straight through what I was about to say. We turned to face the source to find a boy, a little younger, probably only twelve. It was actually rather impressive to be here at his age. His face wasn't quite the normal roundness of a native Japanese, and his light colored hair, though not quite blond, spoke of a foreigner. Standing right in front of me, he was a bit within my personal space- not that it was his fault, since 'my space' had grown considerably in the past few days.

Speaking again, directly to me, he said, "You're cute, will you be my girlfriend?" while taking my hands in his own.

"Eh?" Was my only response to his sudden words. Looking from my hands, clasped between his, to his smiling face, I felt my face getting hot. Boyfriend? With me like this... He's younger than me! There's just no way... Somewhere in my confused conscious, it even registered that he was a head _shorter_ than me.

"Aahhhh!" Standing there, I let out some sort of confused shout before pulling away and ducking behind Onee-chan, who was trying not to laugh at this and only managing by letting out small giggles. Peeking out from behind her, I asked with bright red cheeks, "W,why me? Why not her?"

Ignoring the question, he looked downcast and kicked at the ground a little. "I'm sorry, that was too sudden, wasn't it? Could you at least be my friend?" Somehow, even after what he'd just done, when I looked at him, looking so young and timid now, a pang of sympathy ran through me. Before I knew it, I was kneeling down to comfort him. (In hindsight, it made no sense, because he was nowhere near short enough for me to kneel, and only accomplished making me shorter than even him.)

"Don't worry, it's ok. I'm sure you didn't mean any harm by it, right?" I gave the warmest smile I could manage, though it felt kind of awkward.

With a look like he was on the verge of tears, he nodded slowly, "Nnn." He wiped at the edges of his eyes before asking again, "Then, you'll be my friend, right?"

I stood up, putting a hand on each shoulder and gave the boy a big nod. "Sure, I'll be your friend. As soon as I said that, a his whole face brightened with a huge smile.

"Thank you!" jumping forward to hug me tightly. He squeezed with strength far surpassing my expectations of the child, which had a strange effect, because he was just the right height that his head wound up buried in my bosom.

"Aaaaahhh!" I flapped my arms like a bird while shouting in surprise again. Despite what Onee-chan had told me, I'd been rather hesitant with my body, so it felt even stranger having someone else touch me there. It especially didn't help that he turned his face a few times before finally letting go.

Once free of the little boy's grasp, I sank to the ground, legs splayed out under me, holding my arms around my chest and shivering. Even though he was just a little kid, I felt violated somehow...

Seeming not to notice, the boy finally introduced himself with a big grin. "I'm Haru!"

Finally stepping in, Onee-chan placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I could hear the slight giggle in her voice as she responded, "It's nice to meet you, Haru. My little sister here is Rei. I'm Rai, would you like to be my friend too?"

The boy placed a hand to his chin and thought for a few moments before answering, "Sure!" with as much energy as ever.

With a sly smile, Onee-chan leaned in closer and said, "Then give you a bit of advice." The boy looked confused while she continued speaking in a secretive tone. "My little sister is special, so treat her with care. She's very sensitive." With the last part, she trailed her fingers lightly along my cheek. Something about it sent a shiver down my back. Meanwhile Haru had a complicated expression. He looked somewhere between confused and understanding, though he didn't seem sure which. And I wasn't surprised, since I didn't understand either.

Probing her mind for some sort of explanation, the only thought that I got out of her was 'the sky is blue.'

"Aincrad's sky is orange!" I blurted out in anger before I could stop myself. Besides that not being entirely true, it was a weird enough outburst to stop everyone within earshot, earning me more than a few strange looks. Once they eventually passed, I slowly stood up, feeling like I would embarrass myself again if I did anything else sudden.

"Ummm..." Haru mumbled, staring with big eyes.

"Well, don't worry about that. Like I said, Rei's special." Onee-chan spoke quietly while herding our little group out of the open plaza and into one of the vacant chinese-style houses. It appeared to be vacant, four halls only somewhat enclosed by railings ran between four little rooms, a grassy courtyard with a little flower garden in the center. There was nothing to keep us from hopping over the railing, into the shade of the structure's red-shingled roof. Even if there wasn't actually anything between us and everyone else, just being off the street somehow offered a sense of privacy.

Sitting up on the railing, Haru swung his feet out in front of him, as energetic as ever. "Now that we're friends, what are we going to do?" Boy, he totally forgot about the last topic once he decided to move on to the next one, didn't he?

"Well, we recently broke our swords and were looking for ones to replace them until we find a more permanent solution," Onee-chan explained with a smile.

"Ooh, really? I have a friend who makes swords. I bet I could get him to give you a discount!" Hopping off the railing, he grabbed us each by the wrist and started pulling. "Come on, I'll take you to see him!" Unable to resist the excited child, we allowed ourselves to be pulled behind while he made his way out of the house and back onto the street. From there, he glanced at the sky to get his heading before continuing on. While getting dragged behind awkwardly, I glanced up as well, noting the position of the enormous tower to the next floor, which I knew to be about Northwest. It was a little to my right side, meaning we were heading West.

Before I knew it, we were at the West gate. "Where is your friend? I asked, a hint of suspicion spiking as he began to lead us out of the city.

"He's over in «Shrra» right now." When I heard the name, I relaxed immediately. It was the frontline town we'd passed through on our way to the dungeon earlier. Without warning, he stopped. "Actually, I'm going to ask him if it's ok. What kind of weapons do you guys use?" He asked us this while he opened his menu, so abruptly he didn't even turn around. Strangely, his menu was completely visible. Most people were careful to keep theirs hidden, ourselves counted among them, now that we had things to hide. If I had to guess, it was probably set that way by whoever he had tagged along with before us.

Going through his menu, he selected a friend and typed out a message. Leaning to the side a bit, I read over his shoulder. 『Hey, I made some new friends! They need new new swords though. Could you make them some? They use one-handed straight swords. Thanks!』 After adding a number of different smily tags on the end, he sent the message and turned back to us.

"All done!" shouting that, he grabbed our wrists and began to pull us along again. Now clear of the crowd, it was easier to move, and we picked up our pace to come to walk on either side so he would stop dragging us. As we made our way down the path toward the next town, we moved at the boy's pace. He wasn't really running, it was more like an excited walk, sort of a jogging pace I guess. With our longer legs, we just had to walk quickly keep his pace.

—Lucky, I projected my thoughts to Onee-chan. We managed to find someone who could get us some cheap swords. Well, it was more like he found us, but still. She nodded with a smile. This was really good. Because swords were so important, it showed in their cost. If I remembered correctly, a good sword that we could use for the next couple floors would probably cost around four hundred thousand Col. Shortly after this all began, a kind of widespread, general market prices had evolved, seemingly on their own (though I imagine Argo had a hand in it.) While you were perfectly welcome to haggle for a better deal, it had long-since been common knowledge what the going rate for high-demand items, especially quest-reward swords like the old «Anneal Blade».

But for now, we weren't looking for swords to really use, we just needed something manageable so we could farm the mats to upgrade our own. For swords like that, the cost should be about half. And if we managed to get this discount, we might cut another quarter or so off of it, bringing my estimates for the two down from eight hundred thousand to just three hundred thousand. We rounded the bend that curved up toward «Shrra», the dungeon tower just beyond.

Coming into sight ahead was another group of people, heading the other way. Haru raised a hand excitedly, waving happily at them. "You know them?" I asked, curious how he could know some random people we came across.

"Nope," he giggled, still waving happily. Both of us couldn't help the little chuckles. We both raised a hand slightly, giving much smaller waves, since it would be embarrassing to go by with just him waving. Still young enough to wave happily at strangers, even in this world. It made me wonder how he had gotten by until now. Probably on the kindness of others, I figured.

Someone his age... It was a kind of funny thing, he didn't look to be more than maybe two, three years younger than us. And yet he was such a little kid. Maybe, instead of facing the threat of death by maturing rapidly, as we had, he had regressed instead. Not that I was especially knowledgeable on those sort of things, but I somehow felt like that might be the case here.

Passing by the other group, some slightly guys who had a kind of 'mercenary' look, we offered them smiles.

That's when they drew their weapons. "Drop everything you have, now!"


	152. Chapter 142

**Forward Momentum**** Chapter 142**

My eyes darted all around as the strangers drew their weapons. Before I realized it, my own hand had swiped across in front of me to draw my sword. Except I didn't have one. Crap. Having lost the initiative, we could only stand still as the men moved in to surround us, weapons pointed up threateningly from all directions.

A tight grasp around my chest caused me to look, to find Haru clinging to me, his face buried in my Kimono, hiding from the wicked men. Without thinking about it, my hand moved to rest atop his head, rubbing slowly, assuring him it would be alright even as my own heart beat faster each passing moment.

Shifting slowly, I counted. Seven of them, five swordsmen and two mace wielders. If we had been armed, we might have been able to fight them off, though they probably weren't pushovers if they were robbing people all the way on the frontlines. However, unarmed as we were, I could hardly imagine us beating them.

Running wasn't much of an option either, not without abandoning Haru, something we would never do. And only two «Teleport Crystals» between us. Damn, we really needed to start carrying more of them. Now focusing, I immediately found a sign that would have given the thieves away a mile off, they all had orange cursors. Pkers... No, that wasn't it.

My eyes swept across the men once more. Something about them was off. They were dressed in light armors of leather with minimal amounts of metal covering their shoulders and chests. But that wasn't it. It wasn't their equipment that was wrong. It was their posture, the way they held both their weapons and themselves. Looking at them, they didn't inspire fear anywhere near the level that _that_ _man_ had.

Though I realized this, I didn't know what we could do to turn it to our advantage. Fortunately, Onee-chan did, just in time for the apparent leader, denoted by a much nicer looking sword than the others, to speak.

"I told you to drop your stuff. All of it." When we didn't move immediately, he followed up with, "Now!" I winced at his shout, but wouldn't flinch. Though, my arms did tighten somewhat around Haru's trembling shoulders.

Then Onee-chan stepped forward. "We're on our way to «Shrra». Move," she said simply.

After blinking a few times, then glancing at his comrades to be sure he had heard my sister's words correctly, the tall, brown haired man cracked a grin. "Don't you get it? We're robbing you. Now drop all your items. Or else."

Even with her back to me, I could tell that Onee-chan narrowed her eyes at the man as she answered. "There is no 'or else.' Now let us pass."

Hearing that, the man's grin widened and he looked around at the other men. "Seriously? Are you dense? If you don't drop your stuff..." to finish his threat, he thrust his sword straight out, piercing through Onee-chan's chest, the blade coming out the other side. I could hear a gasp of pain as the sensation shot daggers through our bond, but apart from that, she didn't move.

In a few moments, the damage over time kicked in. A sword pierced through the chest was more than enough to outpace our «Battle Healing», so her hp slowly depleted as we all watched. Halfway, it turned yellow. I heard a few muffled sounds, but no one roused themselves, staring dumbly as the bizarre situation played out. Then down near twenty percent where it would turn red. As the man held his blade out, her health decreasing while she made no move to stop him, his mouth slowly opened, a little bit at a time.

When the shrinking bar blinked red, his eyes went wide and his hand jerked back automatically, the man himself stumbling nearly a meter back to keep from falling over as he reeled away. "Are you crazy?!" he shouted.

"No, and neither are you. That's why you can't take a human life," she responded simply. As planned, her act left everyone too stunned to lift a finger as we walked out of the circle, brushing past the staggered leader and continuing on down the road.

After a couple minutes, when we had glanced back and didn't see them anymore, having moved far enough around the steep rise beside the road, we both let out relieved breaths.

"Well that worked out... somehow." After a few more minutes, I managed to get Haru to unwrap himself from me.

"How... How did you know he would stop?" the young boy asked eventually. He must have peaked and gotten a glimpse of what had happened.

Onee-chan showed a gentle smile as she explained what we both had figured out. "We've met actual killers before, so it was easy to tell that they weren't ready to kill someone- though I believe that's a good thing," she tagged on. "I just had to push him to the point where he had to decide to make him stop, because he didn't have it in him." Seeming to not understand, Haru stared, open-mouthed for a few seconds. It seemed that he gave up after that, returning to walking between us as we continued down the road at a good pace.

Thankfully, the rest of the trip was neither complicated, nor drawn out. It wasn't very far to the frontline town, so we arrived quickly, and from there were directed to Haru's blacksmith friend. He turned out to be running his shop on a little side-street so small I didn't know if I could have found it without already knowing where it was.

As we approached, he stood to greet us, a hand extended to shake. However, we both hesitated in our approach. Looking at his face, I could only think of one thing. Street Thug. The kind of person you cross the street to avoid.

He must have gotten this a lot though, because the first words out of his mouth were, "Don't worry, I'm not nearly as terrifying as I look. The name's Hyung, nice to meet you." Hearing the name that sounded Korean, I took a closer looks at his unnerving face. Yeah, here and there, I could spot the subtle differences, like the set of his jaw. He certainly was Korean.

Kicking herself mentally, Onee-chan stepped forward and shook hands with the man. "So, you need some swords? What kind are you looking for?" Hyung was leaning down over his carpet, which took up nearly half the width of the tiny side-street.

From the red surface, he retrieved a couple different blades. He passed them to us with easy motions, saying it was ok, we could unsheath them. It was considered bad manners to unsheath a weapon in the city, even though it was impossible to hurt anyone. While duels were an easy exception, (apparently duelling in town was common practice in other net games before this) many people actually looked down on customers unsheathing new weapons in front of the shop where they were bought, even though it made perfect sense.

Not that it mattered now, since we were in a tiny alley with no one else around to judge us. Pulling the straight blades from their smooth leather sheaths, we both tested the weight of the weapons. Of course I had been expecting something lighter than my previous sword, so I wasn't surprised to find I was correct. Still, it felt fine in my hand, not like a toothpick that could break any second.

Onee-chan, on the other hand, shook her head at the weapon offered to her. While the numerical stats hadn't been all too bad, she explained that the weapon itself didn't feel right. His second offer worked out, and while he didn't mention anything about a discount, the prices were definitely better than average. I'd been thinking four hundred thousand in mind for each, coming to eight hundred thousand total for high class swords. That put mid-level ones like these somewhere in the two hundred thousand range. Paying a total of three hundred fifty thousand Col, we beat my estimate by a full fifty thousand Col.

Gladly paying the Korean smith, we headed off, making a beeline back out of the city. Once on the road again, we drew our new swords to get a better look at them. They were plain blades, a basic grayish silver. As for the names, they sounded just like the swords looked. «Sharpened Steel Sword» for me, and «Battle Sword» for her. Their stats were evenly balanced, not really leaning toward a specific set of stats. Basic, all-around swords. They would be enough for now.

Another thankfully uneventful walk brought us back to «Higata», where we stopped to get some food from a roadside vendor. There were a couple different strangely named items which gave no indication how they would taste. With a shrug, we ordered. I chose the second on the list, a 'gungun'. Though it looked like a hotdog, it tasted... fruity? Well, surely these cooks would get better eventually, right? Onee-chan and Haru ordered other things, and we all managed to eat them somehow.

By now, it was about 10:00 am. "The next thing to do is farm the mats we need." I said while opening up my friends list. Since the yellow icon telling me I'd received a message had disappeared long ago, I had to go into the friend list, select Argo, and open up my messages with her. Bringing up the most recent one, from a little earlier, I scanned quickly down.

At the top, she made a joke about how I'd finally bought some good info. Beneath that spanned a massive list, containing, I noted, much more information than I had actually asked for. As expected of Argo, it listed all sorts of materials, giving full details on their effects, with ranges of just how many points they would add to any given stat on some of the more common ones. Unsurprisingly, the more rare items had those sections left blank, probably just because there hadn't been enough testing on them to determine something like that.

The next column listed their average market rate, which dipped into the range of spare change for some, and for others topped out at numbers that would leave us with empty pockets. In the rightmost column, she finally listed where each one could be found, including any special instructions on how to get them, like if they were only available at certain times of day.

In all, the list probably contained close to fifty different items. Wait, with all these items, including all of the formatting and relevant information, how did she send this in a few seconds? There had to be a limit on how fast that girl could type! Dropping that futile train of thought with a sigh, I scrolled past the list to find her price and winced. Seventy-five thousand Col. Can't say I didn't see that coming. Stashing that Col for later, I turned to Onee-chan to go over the list and pick out the ones we would go for.

Seeing what I saw, I stopped mid-turn, forgetting what I was doing for a few moments. On the bench next to me, Haru was lying down with his head in Onee-chan's lap, his eyes slitted happily while she rubbed his head.

Then, a flare of anger shot through me, with one other, unfamiliar feeling, though it was not a nice feeling either. Shifting her gaze to me, Onee-chan raised an eyebrow. —Jealous? she wondered at me. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought back angrily, I am not! my face flushing with heat.

"Hohoho," she let out a bit of laughter, like a woman much older than herself, before moving on. "So, that's the list of materials from Argo-san...?" With one last glance at Haru, I nodded. Her lips turned up into a nice smile, "Then let's get to work."


	153. Chapter 143

**A Good, Hard Day**** Chapter 143**

"Ok, looks like that's it for this area," Onee-chan huffed, breathing heavily and swinging her sword into its sheath. Standing in a rocky clearing, somewhere deep in the southwest section of the fourteenth floor, a small mountainous area, just having finished hunting one of the mobs carrying some mats we needed. So far we had moved through most of the list, thanks to Onee-chan's crazy luck with drop items.

Looking up, I could see that the sun was beginning to go down. It wasn't long until nightfall, but we were intent on collecting all the mats today. Checking Argo's list, there were only two more items to go, both of which we could find on certain enemies in the Northern section of this floor.

Out of the list, we had selected a couple different ones that had the best qualities we were looking to add to our new weapons, before setting out. Surprisingly, Haru had insisted on coming with us. When I insisted it was too dangerous for someone his age, he pulled a dagger from his inventory and assured us that he wasn't all that bad with it. After some sighs, we figured he wouldn't take no for an answer and allowed him to come along. Though, only after a warning to be careful and focus on taking care of himself. We could take care of ourselves already, so he didn't have to worry about that.

The next number of hours were rough. While the new swords were perfectly capable of defeating these mobs, they were difficult to use. Probably because we'd held our previous swords for so long. Whatever the case, we made a very poor showing, which I could hardly even relate to our usual skill as frontliners, and it took all day to collect the various materials we had selected. Haru, for his part, was not at all bad with his dagger. While we fought, he would switch in here and there, landing a few good Sword Skills before backing off again. With the way we were fighting, he was actually quite helpful.

Now with the sun going down, I picked Haru up, holding him carefully on my back while we set off at a run, cutting across fields and skimming along the edges of rising mountains as we made a beeline for the area where we would find the last few items.

Specifically, we were searching for «Heavy Blackwood Clubs», carried by mountain trolls, and «Jagged Nails», which would be a pain because they were dropped by flying mobs, «Swiftwing Eagles».

Not quite able to move at full speed while carrying Haru, it took us until the sun had nearly fallen below the smooth western edge of the floor, all grassy fields in that direction. Not that it mattered, because we wound up having to climb a low mountain to reach the particular mobs we were after. Compared to the crazy mountains back on the first floor, this one was little more than a steep hill. A little ways from the top, we found the heavyset «Savage Trolls», two meter(6.5ft) tall mobs which carried huge, enormous black clubs as their only weapon.

Even so, they couldn't be called easy. The trolls weren't the fastest, but they had massive amounts of strength and durability, making them very hard to kill, especially while we were so far off our game. Still, after numerous rounds of attacking, defending, and switching, we managed to bring down a few of them. It really didn't help when 6:00 came and went, the bells of whichever town was nearest echoing all the way up onto the rise where we fought.

The bell marked the beginning of night, a time when the mobs grew stronger and more aggressive. On the upside, they did provide more experience when defeated. Though, the increased danger scared off most, some chose to hunt at night to increase their exp efficiency. Some of the more dangerous ones would even change their attack patterns, or use new attacks altogether. Fortunately, the trolls fit into neither of these categories, so we only had to worry about their increased strength and aggression.

I wasn't sure myself whether day or night hunting was better, since the increase in difficulty could easily increase the time taken to finish one mob enough to outweight the increased experience gain. But that was a matter for another time.

After nearly an hour, we picked up a sixth «Heavy Blackwood Club». Despite the name sounding like a blunt-type weapon, it couldn't actually be used because it was so massive. In fact, when I checked my inventory, I saw that it was getting close to full. Good thing we only had one more item to find.

Continuing the trek up the shallow mountain, the rock-face populated with a sparse carpet of grass, we reached the low peak, hardly halfway to the floor above. Circling around in slow and shifting rings, large birds could be seen. Well, by regular standards they would be considered enormous, with wing spans about two and a half meters(8.2ft) across. But in this world their size was more of a blessing for us than for them. While they carried a little more weight to attack with, it would take someone on Asuna's level to hit the speedy airborne mobs if they were the size of normal animals.

Unlike the trolls, these «Swiftwing Eagles» couldn't really take hits. Of course, their speed largely made up for it, because when we managed to aggro one, it rushed us so fast we didn't even have time to put up our guard before it came crashing through, scattering the three of us as we ducked out of its path.

"Jeez, they live up to their names alright..." I muttered before we continued the engagement. It didn't take as long with the trolls, simply because the eagles were easier to finish off with their low defensive stats. On the other hand, they dealt a whole lot more damage back to us, dive-bombing and clawing us all over before we managed to land hit on them with our off-balance attacks. Since Haru didn't have crazy «Battle Healing» like we did, we insisted he sit the fight out, else we go through a fortune in healing potions to keep him safe.

When we had finally collected some of the «Jagged Nails», we made our way quickly back down the mountain, all thoroughly exhausted, even the bundle of energy that was Haru. Another cross-country trip brought us back to the hub city «Higata».

We continued walking down the bustling city streets into the heart of the city. For once, I was surprised at the looks we were getting. Instead of the usual creepy stares, they looked more confused. Probably because Onee-chan was carrying Haru, something practically unheard of. When we arrived in the central plaza, shop owners and their customers swarming all around the wide area, Onee-chan slid Haru down off her back near the «Teleport Gate»

"I guess we'll split up here," she said to the younger boy. It actually wasn't all that late yet, only 8:30, but with our main objective for today complete, we were exhausted, especially with the combat being so much more difficult than usual. I felt ready to pass out as soon as we got back to our room.

"Aww, I wanted to..." A long yawn cut through what was probably supposed to end 'want to play more', causing Haru to stop with a small look of embarrassment.

"Hehe, we can play some other time," Onee-chan giggled, "but for now, where are you staying? You can get back, right?"

"Nn," he nodded vigorously, "I live in this city, just a little over there," pointing down the street out of the main plaza that I think headed East.

"Then you should get going home for now."

"Ok," he said, sounding for all the world like a little brother following directions. "Oh, but can I add you as friends too?" he asked as if he had just thought of it. We gave nods of consent and he sent the request in a few moments. After we accepted them, he walked up and gave each of us a hug, making us promise to play again sometime.

After saying goodbye, Haru ran off home. Once he had passed out of sight, we teleported back to «Friben» on the eighth floor, plodding through the city. After a quick, unmemorable meal, we arrived back at the inn.

Removing the suddenly stifling kimono, I flopped down onto the bed heavily and let out a long sigh. Onee-chan moved around to the other side, lying down next to me. "What a nice day," she said as if to herself.

"Yeah, that Haru-san is a good kid," I smiled while turning my head to look up at her, sitting up slightly.

"Oh really?" a bemused grin replaced her smile. "I remember a certain someone being jealous of him."

"I was not!" I shouted, my face going red as soon as she mentioned that, "that was just-" but my words were cut off when she turned me sideways a bit, laying my head in her lap as she had done with him earlier.

"Don't worry, you're my precious little sister now. Nothing is going to split us apart," she cooed.

"I,I'm not worried about something like that. That could never..." my words trailed off. It's not like I was worrying about something like that. We would definitely be together forever, right?

Rubbing my head gently, protectively, Onee-chan whispered, "don't worry Rei, we'll be alright. We've made it through everything so far."

"Mmm..." I made a small sound to show my assent. As tired as I was, and with her stroking my hair, that happy sound was the last thing I could remember that night.


	154. Chapter 144

**Shenanigans**** Chapter 144**

_Author Note: Ok, so, a thunderstorm trashed my C drive, right through the surge protector (just my luck). So now I'm writing on my laptop until I can get my computer up and running again. On the downside, no Ar Tonelico, LoL, Defiance, Hawken, or Elsword. On the upside, a lot more time to write..._

We had our swords repaired. We had the materials to upgrade our weapons. There was only one more thing standing in our way. We needed a base for our daggers. To remedy that, we woke up around 7:00 am and warped up once more to the fourteenth floor, scouring the market for a very particular sort of item. Since daggers were not very widely used, the chance of finding a very high quality, while not very expensive one was, well, not going to happen.

Instead, we were searching for high-grade ingots, the likes of which weren't sold in NPC shops. They were generally special rare items, unobtainable from regular mobs. They required you to either get it as a special drop from a sub-boss, (a weakened version of a boss that you could usually take with just one or two parties), or find it in some sort of hidden chest. Unfortunately, they would be very costly as well. But really, at this point, what wasn't?

While shrugging and sighing to myself, I stopped paying attention momentarily, bumping into someone the moment my attention faltered. Out of pure habit from spending so much time fighting, I was already shifting my balance so I wouldn't fall, by the time my mind caught up. Except, the person I bumped into didn't realize that, his arm reaching out in an attempt to steady me. His hand closed tightly on my left shoulder- the one that had bumped him- just as I was transferring my weight to my right.

Instead of simply brushing off the collision, my foot, pressing down to bear much more weight than wound up on it, slipped out from under me. My other foot, already out of place, followed right behind. The world turned backward and I saw the floor above before- _crack!_

"Ugh..." my suddenly disjointed conscience came back, thoughts and sensations all piled up for a few moments until I managed to sift through them. The things that jumped out at me were two points of pain, followed close by one sensation I couldn't place yet. The pains resolved themselves to be both the front and back of my head. Realizing what had happened, I wasn't sure how I'd managed to hit the front of my head while falling over backward, but the answer would come soon enough.

As my mind automatically moved onto deciphering the third powerful sensation, I slowly squinted my eyes open. A spike of the strange feeling caused me to gasp, "Ah!" It wasn't pain, but seemed to be something close to it. A concussion? No, that probably wasn't even possible. It took a moment for my blurry vision to clear, then my eyes went wide.

A boy. Right there, way too close. His eyes were closed with a pained expression, a big red mark on his forehead. A part of me realized that that explained the second bump on my own head. Meanwhile, the rest of me was staring in shock, interrupted only by another jolt of the pain-like feeling causing me to gasp again, squeezing my eyes shut as all my muscles tensed up. Then, the boy opened his eyes and I recognized him.

"K,Kirito-san?! Ahh!" I winced again. His eyes filled with recognition as a series of jolts ran through my body, this time allowing me to pinpoint a location. Of course, he had one hand planted straight on my breast. As soon as he realized who I was, Kirito threw himself off of me as fast as he possibly could. I grunted, this time with actual pain when he pushed down hard on my sensitive chest. Slowly, I sat up, one hand rubbing my head, the other rubbing my breast.

Kirito had one hand held up, a confused look on his face while he looked at the hand that had been groping me, making small squeezing motions Then his gaze moved to me. Seeing me rubbing myself, it finally clicked, and he stiffened for a few moments.

After that I could practically see the gears in his head spinning, as he glanced sideways to Onee-chan, standing stock-still, and staring with wide eyes and a blank expression. Then he looked back to me, my own expression pained while I rubbed the numerous sore spots. Kirito was trying to figure out which one I was, knowing he might be spared if it was me, 'Rei', since I'd told him I was a guy just a few days ago.

However, with the current situation, he didn't seem to have any way of knowing, and so sat there, raising a hand lamely, as if in greeting. Seeing that it was the same hand he'd just groped me, I couldn't help but narrow my eyes at him. Kirito might be an outstanding fighter, but his social skills were pretty much nonexistent, weren't they?

After a few moments of tension, Onee-chan helped me gently to my feet. "Good morning Kirito-san," she greeted him amiably.

"Good...morning..." he mumbled back, looking as if he didn't know if he was still in trouble.

…

By pulling the scene off the street and away from the ever-present crowd, we managed to diffuse the situation, sitting in a small restaurant with only a few customers in the morning.

"So... what are you here for today, Kirito-san?" Onee-chan asked experimentally.

After another glance between us, he explained, "I just came here to sell some extra items I picked up while farming. I was also hoping to collect some other items so I won't have to farm them myself. Despite the perfectly reasonable explanation, Kirito still looked really awkward and continued glancing from one of us to the other.

"Is... something wrong?" I asked when he looked at me again.

"Actually, it's just that I can't figure out which of you is which..." he said in a tone as if trying not to offend us.

Beginning to realize what he meant, I offered, "I'm Rei, actually." He raised an eyebrow to that.

"Mmm, I feel like I'm missing something," Onee-chan noted.

While letting the memory of when I revealed my secret to Kirito back in the Onsen a few days ago run through my mind for Onee-chan to pick up on, I started to explain. "Well, you know how I told you that I wouldn't be able to stay a... a boy, for much longer?" As I spoke, I unknowingly lowered my voice so no one else would overhear. He nodded along without comment. "After that, it turned out I couldn't even last that night." Mild surprise played across Kirito's face when he heard that, but before he could come up with a response, Onee-chan spoke.

Having caught up on exactly how things went, probably a detail she had missed at the time, she said, "For now, it would be best if you just think of Rei as girl. A young, innocent, and shy one at that," grinning when I reddened at her descriptions.

"I'll... do that then..." Kirito mumbled while scratching his cheek awkwardly. Whatever he may have been thinking, he wasn't really in the position to say.

"Then, you were saying that you came here to sell some extra items. What kinds? You might have something we're looking for." Onee-chan effortlessly swung the conversation back to the previous topic. She was right to do so, I realized. Kirito was probably the strongest person we knew, so if anyone would find the sort of rare items we were looking for, it would be him.

While I was thinking that, the black-haired boy was opening his menu and tapping a button to open a publicly displayed window with a list he explained to be the unnecessary items he had collected. Both leaning in, Onee-chan scrolled down the list as we searched for any metal ingots among the items. There were a number of them, which we asked about, but found that many were low level or not particularly useful.

Obviously figuring that we were looking for ingots, Kirito offered that he had found one rare one, although it had only come from the eleventh floor. Still, it was worth a look. He opened up another display window for the ingot, called a 『Trace Ingot』 according to the info shown. Trace... the name really didn't give away anything about the what sort of effects it might have. But it was a class D material, so it had to be good. Up until now, we had largely worked with class E and F materials. We'd only even bought a D class furnace in the past few weeks. Apart from the name and class, there was no more information listed for the item.

"How much for it, Kirito-san?" I asked.

"Hmmm..." Kirito put a hand on his chin and thought for a little while. His eyes moved from side to side as he contemplated. "One hundred fifty thousand?"

"Done!" we both said together, too loud actually, causing the couple other patrons to turn annoyed looks our way. After shrinking away from their looks for a few moments, we said, more quietly, "we'll take it." The reason was obvious. That was a rare, hard to obtain item, even for us. It was of the highest grade available to date. Even if its particular attributes were unknown, he could easily sell it for double what he'd asked.

Without meaning to, I asked, "So, why are you giving us such a good deal?" Then clapped my hands over my mouth. I'd just done something wrong, you were _not_ supposed to question someone when they did something nice for you. That was about rude as you could get. "Sorry," I mumbled through my hands, lowering my gaze.

"Well, actually, it's an apology. You know, for earlier." Looking up at him as he said that, Kirito was looking down at his right hand. When he made a small squeezing motion, the meaning of his words finally hit me. I felt myself go red from ear to ear.

"J,just go and w,wash your h,hand a,already!"

After a few more minutes of talking, we got up and walked out of the restaurant, into the slowly emptying city street. It was time to head our separate ways.

"What are you going to do now, Kirito-san?" Onee-chan asked him with a curious tilt of her head.

"Well, I still have more materials to upgrade my weapon. I guess I'll head to the fourth floor to gather them," he held up a finger, thinking aloud.

"Ok, just don't make a commotion or anything," I warned. Even if we were taking time off, we were part of The Army, after all. Wait, but we're some of the worst offenders... I realized dimly before shaking the thought away.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to end up in any more trouble with the high level guilds," Kirito chuckled, though I clearly saw a flash of sadness in his eyes for a moment. Where did that sadness of his come from anyway? Maybe because he was a Solo? I mean, even if we were 'Solos' ourselves, we still had each other, we weren't truly alone. We had a partner at least.

What about Kirito...?

After parting ways, it took another full hour to find a vendor who had a rare ingot of a class equal to the one we had bought from Kirito. And unlike the other, it cost a not-so-small fortune.

With all the necessary materials, we were ready to reforge our weapons. Then we would finally be able to move forward once more.

_Author Note: Ok, that took waaayyyy too long to write. Sorry, it's been crazy, what with giving blood, then... all the stuff that happened after that. ._._

_But at least I got to touch on a few things here. First, Kirito's harem shenanigans. :D_

_And second, it's currently April 8 in the story, the day Kirito first meets the Black Cats of the Full Moon, so I thought it would at least be worth the mention._

_BTW, added Argo, Heathcliff, Asuna, and Kirito to the characters, since they're the most prominent Canon characters._


	155. Chapter 145

**New Swords, At Last**** Chapter 145**

_Author Note: Oh, I forgot some time ago, but they still have the Dark Cutter, the heavy black sword they got from the Halloween boss fight.(Thank you Ryubimaru for reminding me.)_

We were sitting on our «Vendor's Carpet», back in the mostly deserted town of «Friben» when 9:00 rolled around. It was below the frontline, so most everyone had moved up, leaving the town empty. And with the floor rather high, few of those who started late had reached it yet, not to mention that there was no real need to stay on any particular floor, besides preference. Actually, that was probably the biggest saving grace here, as the town resided within the heavily forested eighth floor, of which most of the NPC inhabitants and local mobs were elves.

In short, it had a nice atmosphere. That's why we still lived here after all. At this time, we were sorting through our gathered materials, divvying them up into piles for each weapon we would create. For our swords, it was simply our current weapons with the five items we had chosen to upgrade them, three various types of horns which increased damage, a samurai breastplate to increase the durability, and a feather that came from a stupidly strong flying mob, to decrease the weight. After those, were the two swords we had left over from earlier on, the «Mark of Bravery» and the long-forgotten «Dark Cutter».

Whereas our daggers were to be made with the two rare ingots we had obtained. Besides the «Trace Ingot», we had bought a «Blade Shard», which wasn't physically an ingot, but served as one as far as the System was concerned, much like the «Daimond Slivers» we had used for our kimonos. While they weren't exactly the same, they were within the same class, and should be similar in power, so Onee-chan should be able to make the same weapon out of them. If it didn't work out, we'd have to figure something else out, but it didn't look like it would be a problem.

To go along with the rare ingots, we had picked out another three materials for increased damage, and two for durability, ignoring the weight since it would be less than that of a sword anyway. On top of each pile, there was a single little magic shard. While we couldn't be sure, we still hoped it would help protect our gear from magical attacks and corrosion like the first orb boss had used. Besides, they didn't count against the five material limit for crafting, so there was no real reason not to. The only other thing we used them for was light anyway.

With everything prepared, I fired up the furnace. We both turned to face each other. We didn't say anything, nodding excitedly. It felt like it took forever for the furnace to to heat sufficiently, though it was actually just five minutes. The moment it was prepared, I dumped the first pile of materials inside, the one for my dagger, the one with the «Trace Ingot». After closing the front, we waited, watching through the glass as all the crazy different materials lit up, coming to glow and finally letting out a bright light and melding into the ingot in the middle.

I used the tongs to pull the ingot out and placed it to the far right side of the anvil behind me before moving onto the next pile.

Once all four had been broken down and combined into a single ingot, ready to be forged, they sat lined up neatly across the anvil. My eyes scanned them from left to right. Her sword, my sword, her dagger, my dagger. Picking up the one all the way to the left, I slid it into the furnace to begin heating, in preparation to forge. While it was heating up, beginning to release a steady glow, I moved the other three off to the side, careful to keep them in order so I wouldn't lose track of them.

As usual, we waited patiently for the ingot to turn a full, blinding white before removing it. Even though it was only required to heat up until it turned an orangy-red, we always waited for it to turn white. I don't know, it just made it feel right somehow.

With the white-hot metal lying on the anvil, Onee-chan took a number of slow breaths. "I want a sword with the same ability as our previous swords," she spoke aloud to cement exactly what she wanted in her mind. "As much damage as possible without lowering durability," she tacked onto the end before raising her blacksmithing hammer.

The hammer came down with a heavy, pure metal clang. In my mind, clear to avoid distracting her, I counted, one. She continued to strike the metal, the full force of her intention and desire in each swing, while I counted along quietly.

…

Onee-chan let out a long sigh, collapsing backward against the building behind our little work space. She had sweat pouring down her skin. It was something not often seen since it required more server resources than were normally available. Only the most exhausted feeling could cause it, but I wasn't surprised. It had taken seventy of those full-concentration hits to forge each sword, followed by sixty more for each dagger.

Three of the weapons were now set along the back of our «Vendor's Carpet», the last dagger, mine, resting on the anvil after just having successfully been forged. I, on the other hand, felt fine. All I had to do was load the ingots into the furnace to heat. But then again, I was just the assistant here, she was the blacksmith. My time would come whenever we needed new clothing or armor. I briefly considered when that might be, but so far these kimonos were holding up incredibly well.

After a short break, during which I grabbed some food from a nearby restaurant, we shoved the anvil aside and sat with the weapons spread out between us. First things first, we opened up all their stats to confirm that they were in fact the same weapons. Once that was out of the way, we cast big smiles at each other and got to inspecting them thoroughly.

Of course, the first thing I wanted to know were the names of my new companions. First, the dagger, called «Fell Drive». I puzzled over the name for a minute or two. Fell meant to fall down, and Drive was... like driving a car? I was pretty sure those words must have other meanings, but my English wasn't good enough to think of what it might mean. Still, the name had a nice ring to it.

The weapon itself was more simple than our last dagger. It was straight-bladed, with an interesting guard. Instead of a flat one parallel to the blade, it was composed of two metal circles, mounted on four crosspieces protruding from the diagonals of the weapon. Holding the blade up, it was about three quarters the length of my forearm, very long for a dagger.

The grip was a dull red, while the guard and blade were similar shades of silver, both bright and shiny as if just polished. The blade itself was thin, and when paired with its length, it had a look slightly like a rapier. As if to spite its outward appearance, the weapon was obviously balanced extremely far toward the high damage, high durability, end of the spectrum. Not to mention the _weight_. This dagger required at least twenty-five strength just to wield, as much as our previous swords after we reinforced them.

Placing the dagger down again, I turned to my new sword. «Ashine». I cocked an eyebrow at the strange name. Since Shine was to be shiny, Ashine would... also be shiny, more or less, as far as I could tell. Except the weapon wasn't shiny, not by a long shot. "Ashine... Ashine..." I repeated the word over and over. Weapons usually had a fitting name, didn't they? "Ashine... Assshhhhiinnneee... Assshhh...shiiinnneee...?"

Blinking a few times, I repeated myself to confirm what had just occurred to me. "Ash... Shine... Ash is... gray, and Shine is shine.(1) So, shiny gray? Hmm..." I stared at the blade, as if it would suddenly answer for me. "It's still not that shiny though..." I grumbled.

Giggling a little, Onee-chan offered, "maybe it's a play off of its true name? The way it was for the «Wayfinder»?"

"Ah, that could be it..." I mumbled back while looking the weapon over. Unlike our previous, the most notable trait about this one was its shape. That is, the slight curve in the blade. Of course, it wasn't a «Curved Sword», because we wouldn't even be able to use it if that were the case. Nevertheless, the slight curve said that it would mainly be useful for slashing attacks, which really wouldn't be a problem, since we didn't actually have many thrust-type Sword Skills anyway.

As I'd already pointed out, the weapon was far from shiny. Unlike the «Veiled Wayfinder», it wasn't even a solid black. As the name did imply, it was gray. A soft, neutral gray that definitely did not make it look like a powerful weapon. If nothing else, it just looked like we hadn't cleaned it or something. Still, as I held it in my hand, I could feel its power. Exactly like our last swords felt. It had a kind of... energy in it, missing from all the regular weapons we'd made.

It made me wonder, back when Heathcliff had first explained crafting to us, he'd said how there definitely weren't 'spirits' in the swords. If that was the case, what was this familiar feeling? While wondering about that, my took in the other details of my new weapon. The handle was a lighter gray, more toward white than black, unlike the blade. The guard was a similar color, a only a little darker, and strangely shaped.

Examining it carefully, I saw that it wrapped around the front of the curved blade, then made angular turns as it moved up, then swung back, splitting into two separate pieces on either side as they extended past the back-side of the blade. Each of the two extensions tapered down to an end while maintaining their thickness perpendicular to the blade. The underside of the thinned edges moved back across at an angle to meet base of the guard.

Turning the weapon around, I found a hole in the back, just a little underneath the lower guard. It was angled down and didn't go through the whole hilt the way it had in our previous swords, but its presence meant that it still had the ability to hold crystals, which had long proved itself an invaluable asset. Pulling a magic shard from our inventory, I slipped it into the socket and felt the weapon come to life in my hand.

A white gleam swept up the blade, little lines like veins stretching up from the hilt as the muddy gray color was replaced by a brilliantly glowing silver. Actually, the entire blade had a real glow. A faint aura of white seemed to cling to the weapon as I swung it experimentally, the light trailing slightly behind. It was almost like the light effects generated by Sword Skills, only not quite as powerful.

Opening up the information window again, I rechecked the name, which now read «Silverlight»

. "Looks like you were right," pointing out the name. Silver was a brighter version of gray, and light was more powerful than a shine.

Onee-chan nodded, then her eyes went wide. "Hey, look at this," she pulled up the information on her own sword and I immediately spotted the difference. All of the stats on mine were drastically higher. A few seconds of quick math and I figured out by just how much. Five times- every stat was five times higher than before. That included the weight, but the sword in my hand clearly did not weigh five times more than it had a minute ago. Maybe it was just because I was holding it? I shook my head. It's magic, it could be anything. But then a new thought came to mind.

"Wait, do you think our last swords got stronger when we put crystals in them?"

"Well..." Onee-chan thought for a few moments, looking over the info windows. "Ah, that looks like a no." I tilted my head slightly, wondering what she meant, and she pointed toward the bottom of the info. Taking a closer look, I found she was pointing out the special abilities. There was a new one listed now, below the one about using crystals. 『Can consume magical power for a short, massive boost in strength.』

"So that's how it is..." I said slowly, "Wait, did it say 'consume'? That means it'll use up these things." So far, we'd only collected the magic shards in unusual ways that probably weren't supposed to happen. "And besides, what will it do to crystals that have a different purpose?" It was then that the power in the small crystal ran out, the blade suddenly returning to normal in my grasp. When I turned the blade around, the crystal was completely gone.

"Besides that, what will it do to Ferin?" I finally asked aloud what I'd been worried about all along. Onee-chan looked down and thought for a minute, her eyebrows pressing together in concentration. While she thought, I noted that the sword had taken about a minute to drain the little crystal. It wasn't a period of long time, and we only had so many of the crystals, but it never hurt to have one more trick up our sleeves when things suddenly went to hell around us.

Apparently coming to a conclusion, Onee-chan looked up again. "Well, besides that power, it still listed the same one from before, so it should be possible to use it that way as well." I nodded slowly.

"Ok, that makes sense, but... how?" I turned the weapon around in my hands again. Maybe there was another slot? One that didn't consume the power, and just left it like the «Wayfinder» had? Coming up dry, I gave a big sigh, unsure of what to do. "Any other ideas?"

Onee-chan was scratching her head with a confused look. "Maybe..." but she couldn't come up with anything. "How about we ask Ferin? Maybe she'll know more?" It was worth a shot, so we pulled the small crystal which was once an NPC from our inventory.

?

Feeling the questioning thought touch gently against my consciousness, I asked aloud, "Ferin, could you help us with something?"

Assent.

"It's dangerous though," I warned immediately. "This sword apparently has two abilities. The first ability is the same as the one our previous swords used, you should be familiar with it."

Yes.

"However, the second one drains the power in crystals, like you are currently. We don't know how to use the first ability, so we were hoping you could explain. By, maybe exploring the sword or something?" I was making this up as I went along.

Yes.

"Ok, here goes, just shout or something if it goes wrong." With that warning, I slid the small sky-blue crystal into the slot. The sword lit up again, the color slightly more blue than before, the same way it had happened with the «Wayfinder» when she turned it into the «Blade of Ferin». I checked the info and saw that the same thing had happened this time as well. Then, Ferin explained how the sword worked.

This time again, it was different from speech, it just dawned on my like I'd always known. The swords would consume raw magical power, and amplify the effects of any crystal with a purpose. Basically, it wouldn't consume anything but the magic shards. While that was a relief, it raised one more question. Why would a there be a sword made to use an item you shouldn't be able to collect? Of course there was no way to answer that, but it gave me a seriously bad feeling.

After thanking Ferin for her help, and promising her that we would get her soul back, we tucked her back in the safety of our inventory. Now that we had gotten through that, we spent some time reinforcing the weapons. Half sharpness and half durability, since they both had a total of twenty attempts available.

When we were finally finished, the new swords required 35 points of Strength to wield, and 40 to wield comfortably. We'd built up a stock of points over our last few levels, so we had enough to put into it right away. Still, I was really glad we'd used that one feather, because it lowered the weight, and thus the Strength requirement, considerably. It only cost a small amount of durability, so it was absolutely worth it.

...

It was about 2:00 in the afternoon. We sat on our «Vendor's Carpet», our new weapons now hanging at our hips as if they had always been there. There was still a lot of time in the day, and we had a lot left to do.

_Author Note: Here, I drew some (bad) sketches. First is one from a little while back, showing the general look of their kimonos: art/Kimono-Rough-Sketch-365881280?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3Atigersight&q o=1_

_ Also, here are a couple sketches of their new weapons: __ art/Rough-Weapon-Sketches-365881651?ga_submit_new=10%253A1366057728&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1&ga_recent=1_

_ Yes, those are the Elucidator and Lambent Light in the middle, drawn for some inspiration._

(1) English to Japanese, in case you're confused about that.


	156. Chapter 146

**Training**** Chapter 146**

We upgraded our weapons on April 8th, five days after we had gained access to the current floor. That left us with four, maybe five more days before the next boss raid, and we were sorely out of shape. We had barely been fighting for the last few days, but when we did fight, it was with all sorts of weapons we could hardly use. Added on top of that, was that we now had new swords to grow accustomed to. Even with the System Assist, it was difficult to position weapons in the perfect place for a Sword Skill without practice. We all had to rely on building it into our muscle-memory to get them right consistently and at such high speeds.

Now that the weapons were different, our old muscle-memory wouldn't quite work. Of course we had measured out the weight and adjusted our own stats to bring it to a good level, but there were still differences. The reach of the blades, the balance at the base and along the blade came into account too. And of course, there was always the lack of System Assist, bent on making our lives as hard as possible. Before we could even think about hunting again, we had to retrain from the beginning, relearning all our attacks again.

And so, with our renewed purpose, we trained. It may have felt like a long time back then, but it all seemed to pass in a flash, over before we knew it. Three days practicing the same strikes again and again, taking breaks only for a couple bland meals each day, and sleep when it felt like we could hardly stand anymore. Sixty hours or so, split between our twenty-six different Sword Skills, just to become mostly proficient again. This would get a lot more difficult as our list of attacks grew longer.

After checking with the clearing guilds to find that they were starting the scouting battles and the Boss Raid would take place in two days, we moved on to the next item in our ever-growing list of things we needed to do. As we had discussed, increasing our skills would have a much more noticeable benefit now than just grinding for levels. Unfortunately, training most of our skills would amount to just that: grinding.

However, this is where we put some thought in and came up with some creative ideas to increase our efficiency. Since we were starting at the top of our skill list and moving down, we would have the next two days to train our «One-handed Sword», and «Dagger» skills. Well, we would be training them both at the same time, but that didn't change the fact that we had two days to level them as much as possible.

In order to do that, it would normally just come down to grinding. However, after putting some thought in, we figured that killing tons of monsters wasn't what would increase our skills. What we needed to do more than anything was to _hit enemies_. That was all. Points were gained based on the enemy's level and how well the attack landed, though from what I'd seen, the enemy's level mattered more. There was nothing in there about how much damage we did, or how many mobs we killed.

Knowing those important things, we came up with a plan that most people would probably find... well, stupid, actually. The plan was to fight mobs for as long as possible without killing them. To do that, we crafted some low level daggers and traveled all the way to the lowlands at the very south end of the fourteenth floor. There, there were some giant tortoises. They had insane amounts of hp and defense, but weren't particularly strong attack-wise. We equipped our low level iron swords and low level daggers, then got to it.

It took us nearly three hours to kill a single tortoise, netting us all of one hundred twelve experience. However, the mobs were slow and their attacks couldn't even outpace our «Battle Healing» We had no need to move, block, or do anything that entire time, but attack. Releasing an unending stream of Sword Skills from both hands, we must have landed thousands, tens of thousands of hits while killing each one. Well, until the weak daggers broke anyway, shattering into nothing shortly after the third monster fell.

After returning to town to eat something and craft many more of the disposable weapons, we continued hacking away at the giant monsters. Time dragged, slowly ticking down until the Boss Raid.

After a good long night's rest, they day arrived. By forsaking everything else, experience gain, making money, training any other skills, we had gotten our «One-handed Sword» to level 481, and «Dagger» to 474. At first glance, it looked like we were almost halfway to maxing out the two, until I remembered that the amount of points increased dramatically from one level to the next. That probably put us closer to 20 or 30 percent, but it was still impressive how fast we could train the skills by focusing solely on them and ignoring everything else.

Once we had slain the boss and moved on to the fifteenth floor, we could continue rapidly training our skills with everything we had.

_A/N Short Chapter. :(_


	157. Chapter 147

**No More Surprises...?**** Chapter 147**

"Oi! Shitheads, listen up!" Kibaou. I grimaced. As usual, he was 'going over the strategy' before we set off from the frontline town «Shrra» to finish off the Boss in the dungeon, a short distance to the Northeast of the chilly village in the Northwest section of the floor.

"We've got a damn dragon on our hands this time. When it uses its fire breath attack, get your ass on the ground or you can kiss it goodbye! As long as you can do that, we'll gut this boss just like the last! Got that you pansies!?" And by 'go over strategy', I mean he shouted a bunch of insults at us. Somehow, it got the crowd of frontliners riled up, all shouting and excited before we set off. I don't understand these people... I shook my head.

At least there were a couple hints in there about what we would be facing. Dragon, has a fire breath attack, got it. We'd figure out anything else we needed to know as the situation demanded, I figured, as we set off.

Still, hearing about a dragon, I couldn't help but think back to when we had fallen outside of the boundaries of Aincrad. Those dark System monster things had all morphed together into that ridiculously huge black dragon, taller even than Aincrad itself.

Walking along with the group, my thoughts wandered back over the events of that day. Getting chased by those things, all the way up onto that strange spiral staircase made of magic, floating outside of the world. It had just kept attacking us, all the way to the top, where it finally knocked us from the sky...

Huh, that was probably the closest we ever came to dying, I thought idly, the terror embedded in the memory having faded with time. Well, either that or when we got the second orb. After thinking for a minute, I decided that falling out of the world definitely had been worse, if nothing else, because of just _how many_ times we had nearly died, one time after another.

Thinking to how we'd gotten out of it, by transforming those magic shards into a «Teleport Crystal», I was reminded that we could use those shards to make items. Although, I seriously doubted we would do something like that. We only had so many of the shards, with no known way of gaining more, and it was all seemed so far outside the norm, I didn't want it to create any more bugs. I mean, we'd nearly died yet again, even after getting out of that mess, from all the corruption of our character data...

Hell, Kayaba Akihiko himself had come to fix the problem so we wouldn't die. But... why? Thinking about it now, it made no sense at all for him to save our lives. He'd created a _Death Game_ for crying out loud! Thousands of people had already died by his hand. Why would he bother saving our lives in such a situation?

We would have been just one more casualty. If he really wanted to save lives, it would make a lot more sense to just let us out of here, wouldn't it? Shaking my head in confusion, I just chalked it up to him being insane for now.

Before I knew it, we arrived at the dungeon. The way up was mostly clear, only a couple mobs having spawned back on the path since it was traveled last. The front of the group cleared them out easily, overpowering them through sheer numbers. If only it were so easy against the bosses.

Arriving at the twelve dungeon floor, we walked a short distance, making a number of zig-zagging turns to arrive before the huge, three meter(10ft) tall set of doors which would lead us into the Boss' chamber. With the entire party stopping before them, Kibaou turned back to speak again.

"Alright, we're going to walk in there, beat this Boss' ass, and then we're moving on. Let's go right through him!"

"Oh!" everyone shouted excitedly drawing their weapons. Onee-chan and I joined the shout, with a little less than our usual halfhearted calls. These guys were too excited today, it was going to lead to overconfidence and mistakes. I just hoped there weren't many fatalities. Despite the number of people arriving to fill our ranks, the clearing group had been quietly dwindling for a while now, people dying to regular floor mobs here and there, others to the bosses during scouting battles or raids.

Looking around, I estimated that our full force was now slightly less than one and a half full raid groups. Maybe sixty people or so, total. As the leader forced the doors open with a big shove, the raid group began running inside until the limit was reached. Glancing around, I counted sixteen of us outside now. So it was sixty-five, total. Depending on how the battle went, there was a pretty good possibility of us being needed.

Looking back into the dark room, I could see that just about everyone inside was in The Force, though they weren't all under one guild anymore. Over the past few weeks The Force had kind of sectioned off into a couple different guilds, but even then maintained the name, kind of binding the high level guilds into a single unit. Apart from them, there were a few people I didn't know, Klein with the other five members of the Furinkazan, Asuna, and... I looked around when I didn't see him.

"Where's-" cutting off my question, a high, screeching roar filled the air, everyone putting their arms up as a strong gust of wind blew out the door. Turning to look inside once more, I found the room had suddenly lit up to reveal the beast inside. The image of a black dragon, the similarities to the one I had been thinking of just a little earlier, vanished from my mind.

This was nothing like that one. Instead of an enormous, pitch black thing, it was long and slender. It had no gaping maw, making it look like it could swallow anything in its path. Instead, its head was narrow and flat, elongated like the rest of its body. It wasn't a western dragon, but a classic Chinese dragon. It had very small legs and by the way it wriggled around, it seemed to move more like a snake.

It had shiny scales, long enough to see coming off of its body instead of forming sleek mail. While the it's back and sides were a dazzling emerald green, the underbelly was a pale gold. It released another high pitched, hissing cry, a long forked tongue darting out to wiggle intimidatingly before it while the main raid party advanced slowly, waiting until the 'introduction' ended, since most bosses were invulnerable during it, while others would unleash devastating special attacks when interrupted.

With a final shriek, its entire body swished across the floor, spreading out behind it. Five bars of hp appeared beside its name: 『The Dynasty Dragon』, and the raid commenced. Everyone launched themselves forward as fast as they could, the few fastest members of the group quickly pulling away from the others.

"What the hell are they..." I mumbled. If they were the fastest, they had AGI builds, meaning low hp, and light armor, meaning low defense. This was going to end badly, unless they knew something about it that I didn't? Maybe it specialized in long range attacks?

As I was thinking that, a blur of motion shot out from behind the massive monster. My eyes could hardly follow, even though it was so large. It was the dragon's snake-like tail. It flew in from the right side, but they raid group seemed to already know about this attack, because they all threw themselves into it as one, blocking the heavy blow across twenty, thirty shields, before breaking into a run again.

Unperturbed, the dragon's tail suddenly flicked around, making a full three hundred sixty degree turn and crashing into the front of the raid group, throwing the frontmost members off their feet and forcing the group back momentarily, before they dug their heels in and reversed the momentum. Some even hacked at the thing's tail, causing it to cry out angrily and pull its tail away.

However, instead of backing off, it used the opportunity to turn its attention to the advance group. It's attacks on the main group had created a large gap, allowing its tail to sweep in behind the advance group and catch them off guard. Like some sort of constrictor snake, the nimble tail coiled around the group, which looked to be five, maybe six people. In a heartbeat, they were all flung sideways, crashing with a sound like an explosion into the room's left-hand wall.

Stunned from the sudden attack, the five men stumbled after falling back to the ground. Meanwhile, the dragon was already lashing out with another attack. Despite them throwing up a hasty guard when they saw it coming, its tail smashed them once more against the wall, their hp bars beginning to fall below the halfway mark. Seeing this, the men began to retreat in various states of panic, while the rest of the raid group had finally reached the boss, launching the first wave of attacks to draw aggro from the retreating group.

However, the Boss was already beginning its next attack. Rearing up high off the ground, its mouth began to open, a red flare appearing deep within. "Breath attack, get down!" a number voices called in unison. At once, everyone dropped to the floor, shields held up over them protectively.

In their panic, the retreating group, who were the target of the long range attack didn't respond soon enough. Spinning around, a gush of fire, like water shot from a fire-hose washed over them. Three threw up their shields to defend while dropping into a low crouch, their hp chipping away while the blocked the worst of it.

The other two attempted to flee, only to be covered by the flames, their terrified screams cutting off short with the sound of shattering glass. For five seconds, fire continued beating down on the three remaining, their hp falling into the danger zone before the flame attack ceased.

As soon as the attack ended, all three fled back through the doorway, throwing themselves out of the Boss Room and collapsing to the ground. While the fighting resumed inside, our group outside stared momentarily at the three men now huddled on the floor, shaking from their near-death experience. One of them even started crying. Slowly, we all turned away. There were now five more slots to fill, we realized, glances going between us all before we noticed one person had already moved inside.

Glancing at the figure's back, I wasn't surprised to see that it was Asuna. That just left four. Though we knew we could help, we knew we still weren't at our best, and hesitated. That wasn't the fate anyone would want to meet. Then someone cleared their throat. Everyone jumped slightly, turning to look at Klein.

"Come on Harry, Dale, Kunimittz,(1) let's head in." With a nod, the more heavily armored members of Klein's guild drew their weapons and followed behind Klein, running into the boss room.

After the initial trouble, things went better. Having come close to the boss now, its huge, coiling body was more of a hindrance than anything, since the raid group had gotten in close. All it could do was thrash at them from one side or the other, only to be blocked by a body of ten or twenty heavily armored tanks.

Despite seeming to lack a strategy, everyone knew what to do. They'd probably gone over it all already by the time the raid actually began, maybe after the scouting battles... That could be the reason we never heard much in the way of planning, since they always seemed to have something in mind when it actually came time to fight.

Turning away from the battle, I looked back to the three survivors from the failed initial attack. I asked, "What were you guys thinking, rushing ahead like that?" The man who seemed to be most in control of himself now, long red hair being his most distinguishing trait, took a few breaths before answering.

"According to one of the information NPCs, landing an attack directly in the center of the Boss's forehead will slay it instantly and give a special item. Since we we have AGI builds and it has its head lowered at the beginning of the battle, we were all hoping to get there and get the LA bonus and that special item."

I could only sigh at his explanation. Sure, it was a nice thought, getting a single killing blow on the Boss... But really, what were the chances of something like that actually working? There was no way it was worth trying in live combat, not with death on the line like it was. Unfortunately, there were two people who would never get the chance to regret it.

As the battle moved on, 『The Dynasty Dragon's』 hp steadily decreasing, a few more people retreated, their hp having fallen a bit too low from the Boss's attacks to continue safely. It didn't have any special attacks, or helpers, or anything as it moved from one bar to the next. There were only two bars of hp remaining when we entered the room, moving in to replace a couple more people taking time to recover.

But now I was worried. The last boss we fought that didn't change attack patterns, didn't get stronger, didn't do anything as it was weakened, was on the tenth floor. That was the boss with the crazy special last stand attack that petrified the entire raid group. Seeing the same pattern developing here made me worry that this boss would have something similar up its sleeve.

After tearing across the open floor and ducking one wide swiping attack from the Boss, we entered the main formation of the raid group. Everyone was jammed into a tight circle, making it hard to move, but we managed to push toward a group we recognized, Klein's guild. They were mostly to the front, on the right side, their two spear users jabbing repeatedly at the Boss while their close ranged fighters rebuffed any attempts to counter.

We slipped into the ranks of the samurai-themed guild and joined with their front members, letting them block while we unleashed strong attacks against the dragon's roughly scaled body, cutting away tiny bits of hp with our attacks.

Another couple minutes passed without incident, reducing the boss to its final bar of hp, still with no noticeable change in its behavior.

"That's it, I'm going to go warn Asuna-san. This doesn't feel right," Onee-chan said. Klein gave a nod before raising his sword to fend off the next incoming attack. She moved off and I turned my head, hopping in place between two of the heavy attacks, to get a look at the two girls a short distance away in the crowd.

"Asuna-san agrees, she recommends we all get clear once it drops to red, just in case," I informed Klein, following their conversation through our bond.

After a glance at me, then another to the girls definitely out of earshot in this chaos, and finally back to me again, Klein just responded, "Man you guys freak me out sometimes," a short chuckle before his expression grew serious again and readied himself for the next attack.

It didn't take long to cut away the last bit of health until the Boss reached red. As soon as the color of its hp bar shifted, I broke clear of the formation, the Furinkazan right behind. A glance over showed Onee-chan with Asuna, fleeing on the opposite side.

We all ran toward the door, turning back to see a few more people following our lead, but most staying with a look like they were digging in for whatever came next. Looks like they hadn't forgotten what happened on the tenth floor either, I chuckled at the thought.

With a deafening shriek, the dragon began to uncoil itself, proving to be far larger than it seemed from the front. Quickly whipping its body around, it encircled the entire room. But it didn't stop there, it kept going, winding around time after time until it stretched far up overhead, spinning and writhing all over the place.

Even if it wasn't invulnerable during this strange maneuver, no one had the presence of mind to try attacking it. We all just stared at the strange sight, unsure of what was happening. With the monster now wrapped around the circular room, blocking the exit from view, its scales darkened from the shining bright green, to a musky forest green. Then it started to shrink inward.

Understanding its intent now, everyone rushed to the outer walls, to cut the Boss down before it could crush us all. We were no exception, tearing over to the closest wall and unleashing our attacks against it.

All our attacks bounced off. I staggered backward, my weapon having just been deflected, in the middle of a Sword Skill, by the whirling plate-like scales. A number of other attacks met the same end, before I lashed out with the heaviest attack available, «Flash Draw», only to be knocked back once more. Even with my brand new sword...

It was obvious no one else was meeting with better luck. So its armor was now impenatrable, and the exit was blocked. Standing there, with the situation so weird I hadn't yet registered shock or fear, I asked, "How do you beat an enemy you can't hurt?" as if they would have the answer.

As it turned out, they did. Well, Klein anyway. "Generally they have a weak point for you... to... attack." He realized the meaning of his own words as he spoke, as did everyone else.

All turning about, we looked in every direction until Onee-chan shouted, pointing up. "There it is!" her finger followed as the dragon's head wound round and round the chamber. It was high up and moving fast.

"How the hell do we get up there?" I gasped aloud.

Asuna stepped forward. "Leave that... to me," a slow breath breaking up her declaration. Tearing off in a seemingly random direction, she sprinted far across the room covering the entire distance in the time it took me to breath.

Launching high up from he ground, as if floating, Asuna planted her feet against the dragon's spinning scales and ran, her steps taking her upward as she approached the beast's head, coming from the other direction. She leaped, but one look at her trajectory, and both of us took off after her. Becaue the dragon was constricting, she jumped too close and shortly before reaching the incoming head, the sharp spinning scales caught Asuna in the side, throwing her away with a shower of red light effects, I couldn't help but compare to blood splatter.

Having eaten the distance, we both leaped as high as we could, catching Asuna between us mid-flight. With a clipped thanks, she turned in our grasp, hesitated for just a moment, then kicked off, throwing both of us back downward to roll along the ground while she flew forward once more. This time, her nothing would stop her.

Raising her rapier in midair, a series of light effects seemed to fire out in front of her. It took me a moment to realize that she was actually thrusting her weapon out for each one, though I couldn't even see her hand moving it was so fast.

Her attacks pummeled the top of the dragon's head as it whipped toward her, but they must not have connected with the weak spot, because the Boss didn't die. It's head crashed into the airborne girl, sending her tumbling high into the air before she plunged dangerously back down. We were much too far away, but luckily, Klein was closer, moving to catch her heavily, crashing to the ground and taking the brunt of the damage on himself.

It took a few seconds to rouse Asuna after the hit, but as soon as she sat up, she demanded, "Let me try once more. I'll definitely hit it this time!" Looking up, the Boss was quickly closing in around us. A lot of people were still beating at its impenetrable scales fruitlessly, while others were trying other methods, a couple doing the same as us, though with even less success.

While I wanted to let Asuna try, I wasn't sure. Though when I stopped to measure up our abilities, the choice was obvious. She naturally had better aim, her weapon was designed to be accurate, she had high level Sword Skills with her rapier, and after watching that last display, probably high level «Acrobatics» as well.

"Sure, you're our best chance here," Onee-chan answered for me. With one more curt nod, Asuna rose to her feet again, her eyes scanning the area until she spotted the head once more. The dragon was closing in now, its spinning growing faster as it crushed inward. If her next try failed as well, she might be able to make one more attempt after.

With a look of utmost concentration, the duelist lunged forward, running up the dragon's rough body as it writhed under her feet. Kicking away once more, she hung in midair for a few moments, her weapon raised as she stared directly at the dragon's approaching head.

Unlike last time, she didn't unleash a rain of blows against the enemy. Watching closely, I saw her face screwing up with determination. Her eyes narrowed, then light exploded everywhere.

After wincing through the heavy glare enough for my eyes to adjust, I saw Asuna falling lightly toward the ground, her sword arm still extended as she fell. Touching down lightly, a rare smile grew across her face. With a small flourish, she sheathed her rapier at her side, just as the 『Result』 windows appeared. Though I couldn't see it, she must have had the Last Attack bonus window as well. I let out a short breath, at it went to someone trustworthy this time instead of just another member of The Force.

Amidst a shower of particles and a big 『Congratulation!』 banner overhead, the raid group released a collective sigh.

"Haha, nice job there Asuna!" a deep voice boomed out. It was Agil, patting Asuna on the shoulder with a broad grin on his face.

"Yeah, good going Asuna!" Klein shouted from where he was standing, a little ways to my right. Following that, a big round of applause went up all around for the raid group's often-forgotten second in command. Glancing over to the other side of the room, I saw Kibaou and a few others storm off, and smiled secretly.

It didn't take long for us to climb the last staircase to the fifteenth floor, coming out with brand new scenery. "Looks like some sort of... ruins?" I asked aloud. All around, lay low buildings, their walls crumbled, roofs missing. All manner of rubble lay in the streets of what appeared to be a deserted city. Looking back, the door to the floor below looked like nothing more than the entrance to a cellar. That caused me to consider how much more difficult this would all be if we had been going down instead of up. Without the giant towers to the next floor, it would have been much more difficult to pinpoint the dungeons...

As that train of thought played out in my mind, I continued to gaze around while walking a little to make room for everyone else pouring out of the unassuming doorway, similar awed looks on their faces at the sudden change of scenery.

A tug at my elbow pulled me from my thoughts and I looked over at Onee-chan. "Come on, let's see what else this floor has," she suggested. I nodded and we set off for the nearest town. Unfortunately, it wasn't like usual, where the hub town would be situated just a short distance from the previous dungeon exit. Walking the perimeter of the ruined city, we couldn't find it anywhere.

"Maybe this is it?" I suggested. Although, I hadn't noticed any 『Inner Area』 notification when we exited the stairway, so that should't be the case. Not to mention there wasn't a «Teleport Gate» around here anywhere.

"Huhh, this is a weird place, isn't it?" Onee-chan grumbled. "Let's go look around some more."

It was April 13th, when we cleared the fourteenth floor, but were unable to find any nearby cities on the next floor up. After an hour, people started to appear in the middle of the ruined city, atop a small platform that revealed itself to be the «Teleport Gate».

(1) Apparently people figured out the names of Klein's guildmates. (According to the anime,) they're: Issin, Harry One, Dale, Dynamm, and Kunimittz


	158. Chapter 148

**New Floor, New Plans, New Problems**** Chapter 148**

Over the next few days, the appearance of a strange new floor without a central town (and for that matter, no safe towns anywhere,) was the hot topic anywhere you went in Aincrad. No one was quite sure what to make of it, but it didn't seem to have any effect on clearing the floor itself. The higher levels simply stayed in the hub towns of other floors, teleporting up each day in search of the dungeon entrance.

Meanwhile, we were back to training. Since the next skill on our list was «Sprint», we figured we may as well help search for the entrance with them. However, as if to mock the thoughts I'd had when we entered the floor, about how it would be more difficult to find without the tower to the next floor to use as a reference, the dungeon entrance was nowhere to be found.

For three days, we searched all over, first around the tower, then sweeping out to search everywhere else. Since there were no towns, there were no information NPCs who sold the floor map either. To avoid a fiasco like what happened the last time we did this, we made sure to take breaks throughout, though they were short, just enough for minimal food and sleep. At the end of three days, we almost had the entire place covered. However, we still never found what we were looking for, and by that point our «Sprint» had risen all the way to level 500.

It was on the fourth day, when we woke, that we decided to call it quits and let the others take it from there. After making sure to spread the map data to everyone else, we moved on with our training.

Next up was «Battle Healing», but that had already risen up past 400 points while we trained with our weapons, so we skipped it. That just left our crafting skills, «Martial Arts», and our new «Acrobatics» and «Hiding». We easily decided to leave the crafting skills until the end. For now, they weren't as important when it came to combat ability.

The next problem was «Martial Arts». Specifically, neither of us were keen on going out and breaking our hands on anything we tried to punch. For quite a few floors now, most of the mobs were armored, non-humanoids included. Again, neither of us wanted to punch a bear wearing plate armor. Still, there were bound to be some mobs around not wearing heavy metal armor, even the ones with light leathers would do.

With that in mind, we warped up to the fifteenth floor and set out to find some mobs we could train on. We tread quickly through the wasted landscape. Ruins, one after another, with short stretches of tall gray grass to separate them, seemed to cover the entire floor. At least the ground was even enough to keep from tripping as long as we payed attention. Apart from that, it the place looked like it had seen way too many wars. Or at least that's what I imagined might cause destruction on such a level. Stone walls rose in all directions, but with few even passing head-height, their bulk broken and crumbling in sheets beside them. In fact, it seemed like there was so much piled up that in some places, we would be walking atop mounds of rock and not the actual ground. Maybe that's why the walls felt even shorter?

Whatever the case, it didn't take that long to come across a group of mobs. Unfortunately, they were large, hulking things. Probably humanoid forms of some large animal, like a rhinoceros. They wore full plate armor, so we moved on. The next number of encounters were similar, with golden armored furies, followed by rabbit knights, and some robotic praying mantises.

Soon after though, we finally came across what we were searching for. 『Foxy Thieves』. As their name suggested, they were humanoid foxes, apparently cast as thieves. They wore light leather armor and held daggers. Observing from a distance, I also noted that some had small bucklers in their offhand, while just a few carried light polearms with three blades extending in a T shape from the end of the pole. They were clustered around one building, much more intact than everything else. It had no roof, but the majority of three walls were still standing above head height.

Closing in, we drew aggro from the closest one and it turned, moving carefully toward us for a few moments before suddenly dropping into a sprint. Lurching into action ourselves, we both threw out punches to lay out the thief before it even reached us. However, it seemed to slip straight past somehow, a long horizontal slash cutting across our open chests and sending us staggering back before the battle continued.

I'm glad there was no one around to witness what followed. While we punched and kicked desperately at the dagger-wielding monster, it dashed all about, dodging everything we threw its way and lashing back at us with one Sword Skill after another, until we were forced to back off as both our hp bars fell into the yellow zone. Quickly concluding that these mobs were just way too strong relying on our level 8 «Martial Arts» skill, as opposed to our level 450 weapon skills, we dropped down to the tenth floor to train on lower level mobs first. Once we gained some skill levels, we would be able to go back.

However, there didn't seem to be any change. Even against lower level mobs, which principal _must_ be weaker, we could hardly even touch them. After repeatedly falling lower, until we finally sat, dejectedly, in the enormous circular plaza in the «Starting City». We could fight the pathetic boars that did nothing but charge in a straight line, but that was about all.

"What are we doing wrong?" I groaned loudly. It was a little after noon, but unlike everywhere else in Aincrad, this city was always packed with people. As such, we were sitting against the side wall of an unknown building, a short distance from the main Western avenue leading straight out of the circular city.

"..." Onee-chan sat without saying anything. There were various ideas rolling around in her head, but they were all jumbled up and I couldn't make sense of any of it like that. She probably couldn't either, for that matter.

So far unable to think of anything, I looked around, spotting a few random people drifting at the edges of the plaza, all in starting gear. Really, these people seemed like ghosts or something. I don't know how anyone could stay sane cooped up in a city like this for six months straight, doing nothing with themselves day after day after day...

Like that, my thoughts wandered for a few minutes before I managed to snap myself back on task. Now, why can't we hit them? I thought seriously. In that fight against the Laughing Coffin, we had landed plenty of hits, both with and without our weapons. What was the problem now? Our skills may have been low level, but our own level should at least make up for it a little bit! Sure we dealt crazy huge damage when we hit something, but why was everything so hard to hit? Could it be that the monsters were responding better somehow, since we had no System Assist?

"Wait..." I thought aloud, "just... how fast _are_ System Assisted Martial Arts anyway?" We'd never seen anyone else use the skill, so we had no point of reference for our own attacks. If they were supposed to be anything near the realm of Sword Skills... Our attacks were all at a regular human level- no, they weren't even that. We'd been throwing unskilled punches all this time. It wasn't that our skill's level was low, our own skills weren't good enough. Leaving aside Onee-chan's fight back when we were kids, we weren't trouble makers or anything. We didn't get into fights.

Thinking about it now, sword fights and fist fights were two entirely separate worlds. By now we'd had plenty of practice in the former, but none whatsoever in the latter. It was no wonder we couldn't even touch anything besides the beginner boars. To us without any practice at all, even the basic System Assisted attacks would be on a completely different level.

"Then the question is, who can teach us martial arts?" Onee-chan asked. We both stared at each other for a few seconds. Who could possibly teach us martial arts? It was right then that a few people entered the courtyard from the opposite side. When I threw a glance that way, wouldn't even have needed my enhanced vision to spot the heavy armor worn by the new arrivals. Members of The Army.

Turning back to our conversation, I was about to continue thinking when it finally occurred to me. We were kind of skipping out on our duties right now. It would be really bad if they saw us lounging around in the «Starting City» in the middle of the day like this. With a quick grab at Onee-chan's hand, I rushed us into the looming metal arches of the «Teleport Gate», calling out the first name that came to mind.

"Teleport: Barta!" After the brief flash of light, whisking us far away from the people who might recognize us, we I felt my feet touch soft ground and heavy heat press in from all sides. It was the twelfth floor, a desert area that never seemed to drop below boiling. We'd only come here before to collect the materials to make our shoes. Apart from that, we had avoided the painfully hot floor entirely. Yeah, this would be the floor I call out at random.

As I began to slump forward, a moment from turning around to walk back through the gate, a few people walked past, dressed in heavy armor. They... must be dying... I muttered internally. As they passed, I noted the strangely eye-catching three-horned helmet the frontmost man wore. My eyes trailed after him as he spoke in a loud voice to the two companions trudging along behind, sweat pouring down their faces in a way that should have left them with heat stroke in a matter of minutes.

"Ryufior, where are you going?" one called out.

"I'll definitely get my sword reinforced this time!" the leading man exclaimed loudly, as if there was no one around to bother with his shouting. A few moments ago that still would have been true.

"If you say so..." the other friend muttered low enough that I wouldn't have been able to hear it with normal senses alone. Going on in a louder voice, "But where are you actually going?"

"I heard there were solitary mobs up in the outskirts of this floor that carry some of the best reinforcing materials for the «Shimmering Blade»," Ryufior explained, the weapon named probably being his sword. For a moment, I considered offering our help, but we had more important things to do now.

At that moment, a buzz of excitement caught my attention and I turned a glance to my side. "Onee-chan?"

"That's it!"

"Huh?" tilting my head in confusion.

"I know where we're going!"


	159. Chapter 149

**Martial Arts**** Chapter 149**

_Author Note:_

_Sorry for the long delay, I finally got my computer fixed. It took a total of ~52 hours after that to install/tweak all my programs to my liking. I'm crazy OCD when it come to how my stuff works,(as you can probably imagine)_

_If anyone's wondering what it looks like, I put up some random screenshots of the process on my deviantart page. :D_

Landing on the hard rock ground of the second floor, we checked our direction and moved to head out the West side of town. "The hermit?" I asked as we ran swiftly between the heavy stone buildings which seemed to rise from the ground of their own accord.

"Yeah, he taught us the skill originally, that must mean he knows how to use it, right?"

"A,aahhh..." I answered, not really sure. I mean, I guess so. He was the NPC who taught the skill, so it would make sense, I guess... Following the same path we'd taken a number of times now, we scaled a seemingly random, unclimbable cliff, moved across the ridge at the top, through a number of passageways, fought off some mobs, and slid down a river, to finally arrive at the insanely secluded expanse of flat rock.

"How did Argo-san ever find this place anyway..." I muttered as we descended the last stretch toward the little shack. Sitting on a mat inside the little hut as always, the hermit slowly opened his eyes as we approached. We came to a stop, waiting. He didn't say anything, and we continued standing there, quickly beginning to feel awkward.

—Wait, what do we say? I wondered, directing my question to Onee-chan. We totally hadn't thought this out...

"Could you please train us in martial arts?" Onee-chan asked all of a sudden, as if that was her plan all along. Even though I could tell she'd just come up with it three seconds ago.

"I have already taught you «Martial Arts»" he said simply.

Onee-chan nodded, but contradicted him. "Yo-" suddenly cutting off when she remembered to speak formally, "Thee taught us the Skill, but not how to use it. We want to learn martial arts. Actual martial arts," she said to be perfectly clear.

"Aahhh..." the old hermit made a sound like he understood, but continued sitting there for nearly a minute more before rising from his folded-leg position. "If that is the case, I shall train you." He slowly stepped forward, causing audible cracks as he straightened his posture, coming to be surprisingly tall by the time was done. I was about eye-level with his collarbone now.

"First..." With that uninformative bit of speech, he slowly lowered into a wide stance. As I watched, the cursor above his head began flashing red.

"No..." I mumbled. Despite my own words, my pulse was already rising, my feet spreading slightly. In a short moment, the old man's cursor turned red and he launched forward, almost too fast for me to see. Barely catching the movement, I dove sideways, avoiding his open-palm thrust. However, before I even hit the ground, a kick I never even saw connected with my stomach, knocking the wind out of me as I rolled across the flat stone platform.

Seeing the edge approaching quickly, I threw my weight into the ground, grinding painfully to a halt with plenty of room between me and the edge. Onee-chan was desperately attempting to defend against a torrent of blows while I forced my feet back under myself. I couldn't help but glance back. This platform was surrounded by a pit that fell off into complete darkness. It certainly didn't seem like a possibility to defeat him with our current skills, but I figured that he'd stop short of killing us. This was supposed to be training after all. Falling over the cliff, on the other hand, that's not something we would survive.

With that in mind, I raced forward again to help Onee-chan. However, I had hardly arrived when a twist and a backhand sent my sister flying into me, both of us falling in a heap. After a moment of getting back to our feet, I saw that I'd lost about a quarter of my hp, while she was down about halfway.

The martial arts master, looking twenty years younger than he had before, took a few deep breaths, moving his arms in big circles in front of him like some sort of martial arts form. His hands came to rest, palms facing down, and he stopped for a moment.

"Hup!" With a short, throaty shout, he lunged forward once more, instead of trying to dodge as I had last time, given how badly it went, I raised one arm, blocking his initial punch. A second blow landed against my chest before I could blink, sending me skidding backward across the ground, still standing. I leaned forward, sliding to a stop while the old man leaped threw a series of kicks into Onee-chan. She twisted and blocked left and right, managing to block a few before one connected and sent her staggering while the the rest rained down on her arms and legs.

I was already moving in again, attempting to attack for the first time now. My single punch, aimed directly at the man's chest, somehow passed through thin air. Right in front of me, he had shifted slightly to the side. An iron grip closed around my wrist and at the same time, gravity seemed to spin around me. A loud crash and a shout, which I only realized afterward was my own, and I found myself lying out flat on my back. In the top corner of my vision, my hp bar was somewhere around thirty percent.

After one failed attempt, I made my shaking arms support my weight and pushed up from the ground. Turning around blearily, I found the man standing, Onee-chan on her back in front of him a short distance away. Her hp had fallen a little lower than mine, just rising out of red when I looked over. As I watched, Master's cursor returned to green. He walked slowly back to his little hut, sitting as always on his mat. He closed his eyes, and apparently returned to meditating.

When we had eventually gotten ourselves together, we walked over to the man. He'd taught us the skill yeah, but I'd never expected something like that from him! We both sat down before him, folding our legs and sitting in a seiza position.(1) Like that, we waited, unsure of just what to say now. Fortunately, the man opened his eyes after a short time and spoke.

"You... have much training ahead."

(1) The traditional sitting position, like you see all the time in anime.


	160. Chapter 150

**Uh Oh**** Chapter 150**

_Author Note: I think I'm going crazy. I've had My Dearest repeating over and over in my head for the last two days. So I went and downloaded it. I've been listening to it on repeat for a while and I'm up to 77...78 plays now... And made 2 Guilty Crown desktop backgrounds... I'm at the point of considering making an SAO amv with the song. Would anyone watch it if I did?_

"You... have much training ahead." Following those ominous words, we stayed on that mountain, training. Finding from our spar that we were utterly useless right now, our new Master instructed us on how to effectively use our skill, from striking, to balance, to movement. He covered breathing, placement of our feet and how to properly leverage our own force and our opponent's against them. It was amazing, actually, just how much went into it. And to think, we'd just been trying to punch things...

Unfortunately, five days into our training, our stash of rough bread, which we kept for any extended trips out of town, ran out. Why would we expect to be away for nearly a week? Well, it wasn't that we couldn't go without food, but after just a few hours after we became hungry, it obviously began to affect our training. Neither of us could concentrate, our movements slowed, they carried no real force.

"Master, I'm sorry. We have to go back to town to get food," Onee-chan finally spoke up. She was laid out on her back after her pathetic attempt at an open-palm strike had turned into the Master hip-tossing her. Neither of us were sure how an NPC would respond to that sort of request, but we weren't going to get much accomplished like this.

"I see..." After standing inhumanly still for a few more moments, he nodded his head once. "Be safe on your way." Getting permission to go and satiate our gnawing hunger, we both hopped to our feet.

"We'll be back soon." We both spoke together, before turning to head up the path off of the terrace. "Ah," Onee-chan made a small noise and turned back. "Do you need any food?" she asked. He was an NPC and we'd never seen him so much as eat of sleep. But then again, all the other NPCs ate and slept...

"I do not," was his only answer. As we continued on our way, I shrugged.

"Some, uh, Zen Master thing?" I guessed haphazardly once we were well out of earshot. Onee-chan shrugged too. The trip back was much shorter, not requiring us to make the roundabout trip. Instead, we simply slid down one of the mountainous walls to reach the regular path, and ran straight back toward town. However, not far off the mountain wall, a yellow icon appeared in my vision, marking that I'd received a message. Actually, they had probably sent it in the last few days, since that area seemed to have message restrictions the same way dungeons did. However, when I tapped the icon to open it, a few different message windows appeared around me.

Grabbing them at random, I quickly scanned their contents. Seven messages, though I read them out of order, were from Asuna. They found the Boss, (apparently it was the only enemy in the well-hidden dungeon) and she detailed the time for the scouting battle. Then she was asking why we weren't at the battle. Then came the time of the Boss raid. Then a 'where are you'? because the raid was about to begin. After that was a message saying that they'd beaten the Boss, and then asked where we had been.

The last message rambled on a bit, apparently Asuna was worrying if we were still alive. Even though our names would gray out on her friends list if we died, she had gone to the «Monument of Life» to make sure. Finally, she asked if we were ok.

I typed out a quick, 'sorry, we were out of message range, we're perfectly fine' in response to her sudden flood of messages and sent it before doing anything else. The windows closed around me and I let out a breath. Asuna was really worried, wasn't she? Well, now that she knew we were alright, she'd be able to calm down some at least.

The only one left was... looking at the only remaining message, one not from Asuna, I found that it was actually from Thinker. "I wonder what it is..." I mumbled while reading. It wasn't much, just a request that we show up at the «Black Iron Castle». Given that he could have sent it any time within the last five days, whatever it was about was more than likely over already. Even so, I sent back a reply telling him we were tied up with something and we'd check in once we'd cleared it up.

With a confident nod, we set kicked into a sprint, hoping to get back to training soon as possible. A glance at my menu told me it was a little after noon right now. So, they'd cleared the fifteenth floor sometime in the last few days. Messages didn't say when they were sent, so I didn't really have anything to judge by except to guess. Being gone for five days, they'd probably found the dungeon entrance the same day, maybe the day after. Two days of scouting battles were the norm, putting it at three or four days. Since it was the twenty-second, that put the clear date on the nineteenth or twentieth.

Five or six days to clear the floor. Thinking back to the first floor, we'd just kept pressing on, never having any idea when we might manage to break through. Now, we had a record of reliable results, and seemed to be picking up speed with each floor. Still, we had a long way left to go...

By the time I finished that thought, our crazy speed had brought us all the way back to the outskirts of the second floor's sprawling central city, «Urbus». Along the way, I had noted the absence of the huge sunken ring which had once ran the entire way around the floor. I guess when it closed up in an attempt to crush us, it was a permanent change...

After arriving back at the massive mountain encircling the city, only four small holes to serve as entrances, we searched for a food stand. Restaurants mostly sold things like soup, or other meals which would be eaten immediately. We were going to need something more basic, probably just a lot more bread, to last for the remainder of our training. Once we found a place, we bought enough of the cheap bread to last a month, maybe even more.

Since it was the middle of the day, there weren't any other people around. That meant we could cut through the city. We had entered through the South gate, but the shortest route to get back was through the West gate. If there'd been other people, it would have taken less time to walk back out of the town and run all the way around the side.

Getting up to speed, we dashed through the blocky, angled streets, not really knowing them. As long as we kept heading in the right direction, we'd meet up with the main Western avenue. We kept off of the smaller side streets though, since they had a tendency to dead-end.

In seconds, we had made it halfway through the city. Right as we rounded a corner, a voice suddenly called out, but I hardly noticed, I was too busy skidding to a stop before I slammed into a number of men, standing in the next street. Still, we had way too much momentum to stop in such a short distance, and wound up slamming into them. The system bounced us off and I found myself a moment later sitting on my butt, halfway leaning up on my hands.

"Sorry!" we called together, automatically. Running like that in the street was wrong for this very reason. However... I winced up at the men, dull pain registering in my hands that had just been scraped badly against the harsh, rocky ground.

Why were these guys standing like that? The system made it impossible to move someone against their will within cities, however that meant they had the want to stay where they were. If they had been walking around, as most people do, we all would have gone crashing to the ground. Instead it was just us. Meaning they wanted to stay where they were?

As these thoughts went through my mind, I pushed myself back to my feet beside Onee-chan. Blinking up at these people, my questions disappeared. They were from The Army; it was clear as day even before their cursors appeared, revealing their MTD guild icons. A whole slew of new questions came to mind now, the foremost being 'why are _they_ here?'

"Looks like we finally caught you." When I heard that voice without a visible source, my eyes scanned across everything once more. Seven men in heavy plate mail, dark capes clasped over their spaulders. The iconic image members of The Army had created in these past months. I also noted that they all carried shields as well. They would be the front line in a fight. There were seven, the maximum for a party, so if they were on the second floor to train, their party was very badly off balance. Wait, that wasn't right, what had that voice just said?

Shaking my head, the words echoed and my mouth fell open a little bit. Catch us? The only people that I could relate that sort of thing to would be the Laughing Coffin, but this was a city. There's no way we could be hurt here. Besides, these were Army members, not those three cloaked men.

While my scrambling thoughts failed to make any sense of this situation, the group of men standing shoulder-to-shoulder ahead of us parted to allow a few more people into view. Unlike the soldiers, wearing basic plate armor and mid-level capes, probably bought from an NPC shop in bulk, these men were more dressed up.

Overall, their equipment was definitely a step above that of the soldiers. Their armor was clean and a few even had theirs colored red, purple, or blue. Their capes were much smoother, appearing to be more in the range of silk, as opposed to the other's woolen looking ones. None of them were carrying weapons or shields though.

As my eyes moved over the group, I finally came to the end, blinking a few times in surprise when I saw a figure unlike everyone else.

"Thinker-san?" we both exclaimed after a moment of shock. In what could only be described as casual clothes, the frazzled looking twenty-something young man stepped forward.

However, whatever he was going to say was cut off when one of the other finely dressed men stepped forward, speaking in the same voice as the one just moments ago. "That's Thinker-_sama_ to you! Show your superiors some respect." Somehow, he managed to deliver the seemingly angry command with a totally normal tone. Looking at this newcomer, he was the one with dull crimson armor, his dark green cape also having a slight trim of gold at its edges. Despite his clothes, the most notable thing was his age. Unlike most everyone, he was definitely upward of thirty, probably close to, if not forty years old. With his green cursor and health bar, I discovered one more thing about the man, we had already met.

After brief glance between us, synchronizing all the bits of information each of us had picked up, Onee-chan spoke up. Addressing the red armored man, "We'll keep that in mind," she spoke in a carefully neutral tone, "so... just what is all this right now, Kains-san?" She raised her arms slightly to indicate to the large group.

"I'll explain," Thinker stepped forward, past the soldiers and came close. "Just give us a moment," he spoke over his shoulder. We both simply raised an eyebrow to ask him, 'what the hell is going on?'

Dropping his voice well below what anyone behind could hear, he explained with a fast, urgent words. "I'm sorry about this mess. All the captains are angry because you two aren't on the frontlines. They've been demanding that we bring you in and you explain what you've been doing. I was holding them off, but then you disappeared for five days. After the first few days, they threatened to bring it to vote, if they should remove me from the position as the head of the guild. At that point I had no point but to ask you to come in."

"That would have been all, until you sent me a message a while ago. I was in a meeting and had couldn't avoid revealing the contents of the message. The captains read your response and demanded that we bring you in immediately."

"Ok ok, I'm sure you've explained well enough," Kains spoke over Thinker's last few words, bringing him to a halt at the end of that last sentence. "Now, we have some important matters to discuss." With a short pointing motion, the soldiers moved forward. We exchanged a glance with Thinker as he stepped back.

Large hands closed around either of my shoulders as the men moved into formation around us. Wasn't this just a _little_ heavy-handed? No, more than that, did they really think they needed seven men in plate armor to escort us? Onee-chan shook her head with a small sigh. Whatever, as long as we could help Thinker out of this tricky spot, it would be fine.

They led us back to the town square, most likely intent on going back to the «Black Iron Castle». As we approached the twisted stone arch, this floor's «Teleport Gate», I turned my head back, looking what I would guess to be the direction of the old hermit's shack.

Sorry, looks like we won't be back as soon as we thought, I said in my mind, as if he would hear me.

_Author Note: Urgh, 375 plays now..._


	161. Cheatsheet 10

—

«»

『』

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

March 8 – Wednesday Tenth Floor Clear

March 18 – Saturday Eleventh Floor Clear

March 25 – Saturday Twelfth Floor Clear

April 3 – Monday Thirteenth Floor Clear

April 13 – Thursday Fourteenth Floor Clear

April 19 – Thursday Fifteenth Floor Clear

exp 2036800

col 812260

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

One-handed Sword 481

Sp: 2323617

Sprint 500

Sp: 2508600

Battle Healing 429

Sp: 1847000

Acrobatics 1

Sp: 6

Dagger 474

Sp: 2254822

Metal Working 243

Sp: 595500

Metal Refining 256

Sp: 660000

Tailoring 225

Sp: 512520

Cloth Refining 146

Sp: 216000

Hiding 1

Sp: 0

Martial Arts 24

Sp: 6303

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

# E Note

Nagajuban 2 2 Goes under kimono – silver

Twilight Kimono 2 2 Purple at top, fades to pink at bottom – high defensive stats

Aurora Obi 2 2 Blue with aurora and star patterns – high defensive stats

Hashi(Ties) 4 4 Keep the kimono in on and in place – white

Obiage 2 2 Scarf-like decoration for obi – silver

Obijime 2 2 String decoration for obi – white

Ashine 2 2 10S10D - Dark gray, a little curved

Fell Drive 2 2 10S10D - Red handle, silver guard and blade - long and thin

Iron Sword 2 0 different low level iron swords

A bunch of rare mats xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was- no charge left

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

Red Orb 1 0 Red orb from floor 1- first orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Yellow Orb 1 0 Yellow orb from floor 2- second orb to unlock Ferin's cave

blessed twins shard of power I 70

50% full

Current Friend List:

Argo

Asuna

Haru

Lizbeth

Thinker

Vale

Level chart

30 120000 1740000-1860000

31 1 125000 1860000-1985000

32= 2 131000 1985000-2116000

33 3 138000 216000-2254000

34 5 147000 2254000-2401000

35 8 159000 2401000-2560000

36 13 176000 2560000-2736000

37 21 201000 2736000-2937000

38 34 239000 2937000-3176000

39 55 298000 3176000-3474000

40 89 391000 3474000-3865000

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

Sliding Dash – charge type – fast slide forward ~5 meters – thrust attack

Blitz – short range, high power downward slash from the shoulder

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

Rebound – defensive skill – 3hit- upward slant, horizontal, downward slant – very fast w/ short delay

Town Names to Remember:

Starting City – 1 hub

Horunka – 1

Tolbana – 1 frontline

Urbus – 2 hub

Serof – 3 hub

Reu – 5 hub

Pala – 6 hub

Regg – 6 frontline

Shaen – 6

Finreo – 7 hub

Maren – 7

Friben– 8 hub

Cetiose – 10 hub

Sythum – 10 frontline

Taft – 11 hub

Barta – 12 hub

Higata – 14 hub

Shrra – 14 frontline

Onizumi – 14

-Special Equipment Forged-

«Veiled Wayfinder» – Rei&Rai – 3rd floor – In use

«Harmonious Convoy – Rei& Rai – 3rd floor – Destroyed

«Sunbeam» – Asuna – 6th floor – ?

«Mark of Bravery» – Vale – 7th floor – not in use

«Twilight Kimono» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

«Aurora Obi» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four is in the deepest pit of the darkest cavern. You must travel to the land of Earth. Through the Southern mountains, descend into the endless ravine. You must continue to fall, all the way to the bottom. Only there will you find 『The Master of Earth』. Defeat it to claim the second orb. But beware, descending into the caverns is the easy part. They will fight to keep what they have claimed.』

-3-

?

-4-

?


	162. Chapter 151

**Guild Affairs**** Chapter 151**

After arriving at the «Black Iron Castle», we were brought to an area we'd never gone before. Though I can't say it was a surprise, since only the first five or six floors saw regular use. Apparently, somewhere among the numerous rooms, all the way on the thirteenth floor, there was a large conference room.

Inside, a huge marble table stretching the length of many normal rooms, even before considering the countless chairs and the open space to walk around that. Nothing hung from the pale brown walls, and despite only having a few hanging lights, it was quite bright inside.

Of course there weren't enough people to fill such a huge table, our numbers coming to about fifteen, so we all sat at one end of the table. We were seated on the end, the three other chairs left empty while all of the captains, and Thinker, took their places along either side.

Once settled in, Kains, who obviously appeared to be the one in charge among the captains, spoke again from the first seat at the corner, on our right. "Now. You two were appointed as our representatives on the frontlines. However, for more than a week you have continuously shirked your duty, offering no explanation for doing so." A chorus of agreeing murmurs drifted around the table.

"You two have been ignoring all your responsibilities for an extended period of time now. I'm not just talking about this incident, there have been many times in the past where you have run off without a single word about your intentions. A few times you even returned here covered in wounds which we were obligated to treat..." As he rattled off one thing after another, I realized how we must look to these people. It didn't help that they ranged from just-adults to Kains' nearly forty appearance. Meanwhile, we were all of fourteen.

"For the numerous problems you have caused the guild, we are strongly considering exiling you."

"What?!" without time to think it through, we were both on our feet. No one said anything, but their expressions said that our outburst hadn't done us any favors.

"As I was saying, we are strongly considering it." I threw a glance at Thinker, who turned his head away, looking down dejectedly. Kains didn't have to explain what exile was, it functioned much the same way it had back on Earth. The order was passed to the 'government' here (or the closest thing to a government we could have here), the high level clearing guilds. They informed everyone of people who were not to be dealt with. It was similar to being put on the 'bad manners' list in the paper, but much, much worse.

We had seen one such person before, the only man I can ever recall hearing of to be exiled. Something about misappropriating guild funds, causing some guild to go into a massive hole of debt.

While the official punishment excluded you from partying, or making deals with others for items or Col, the actual effect was far worse. Upon exile, many people you met would ignore you entirely, as if you didn't even exist. Others made sure to keep their distance. The ones who would still talk to you would be cautious and no one would believe anything you said.

Exile was technically one level up from imprisonment, still allowing those punished their freedom. It seemed to be reserved for those who caused major problems, but didn't actually break any particular law or taboo. I couldn't be sure, but that sort of punishment might actually be worse than just dropping the offender in prison and being done with it.

"If you would like to avoid such a thing, you have to tell us just what you have been up to this past week." When Kains offered such an easy way out, we found ourselves blinking. That was all?

"If that's all..." Onee-chan let out a relieved sigh. "We've been training to increase our combat strength, we aren't strong enough right now," she said simply.

"Is that so?" Kains went on in his ever-neutral tone. Somehow, it felt like he wasn't doing it to cover his feelings. It felt like he was just being really... straightforward. "If that's the case, would you mind telling us your current levels?"

After the immediate cringing reaction we'd developed toward that question, Onee-chan replied, "We're level thirty-two right now."

Another round of whispers passed through the room before everyone quieted down. "Only level thirty-two? Even I'm already thirty-four. I would have expected more from frontliners." My eyes widened slightly. This guy was a higher level than us? Really? No, that wasn't actually that strange. He was a captain, and even then he was above all the others. He would certainly be the strongest person among them right now. Besides, we hadn't even gone hunting in a week. We would be at least that level by now if we had.

Voicing my thoughts, "We were training our Skills actually," Onee-chan clarified.

Kains' response was immediate. "And that took precedence over your guild duties?" Crap, he had us there. The other men agreed aloud this time.

Wait, this wasn't right. These men had already agreed, they were already in supported Kains' position. Just giving an explanation wouldn't suffice. They had already made the decision beforehand, so we would have to persuade the whole group that we really had been doing something useful while we were away. Then again, their leader was Kains. Convincing him would essentially sway the whole group. Well, at least enough of it to keep them from using their authority to completely blacklist us.

Onee-chan nodded slightly at my thoughts. Just saying we'd been training our skills obviously wasn't a good enough reason to ignore guild duties, we would have to tell them _why_ we were training our skills. I gave her a slight nod back. This quest we were on to help Ferin may be strange and rather shady, but attempting to keep it a secret wasn't worth the cost of exile.

"That's not it. There's more to it than that," she said carefully, quieting the other voices in the room. "We've been working on a long-term campaign quest..." Bingo, that one got their attention. "...but we aren't strong enough to complete the next section yet. We've been training our skills in order to quickly increase our combat strength."

That's when something so surprising happened, it was almost eery. Kains' face lit up. "So that's what you were doing? That's perfectly fine then. I'll allocate some reinforcements to aid you-"

"Woah woah woah!" we both blurted out together, feeling the whiplash from the older man's sudden about-face. "What was that?"

"I'll send reinforcements to help you clear the quest."

We didn't even have to think before we answered. "No way."

Kains quirked an eyebrow up and asked, "And why is that?"

"It's way too dangerous."

"If that's the case, I'll send our most elite members to join you."

"No no, it's that's..." as we trailed off, a new voice chimed in.

"You know, that's kind of creepy..." It came from a man with slightly lighter armor and a blue cape. After a moment not understanding what he meant, I realized we'd been speaking together for a while now.

Clearing her throat loudly, Onee-chan went on alone. "The thing is, the area we're heading is extremely dangerous. We can't ensure- no, we can't even give you a reasonable chance that anyone you send along with us will return alive."

"Oh really? If it's really that dangerous, why are you doing it? Wouldn't it be a waste for you to just die? Then you wouldn't be helping the clearing group at all."

Finally, he had struck a question we couldn't answer. Not only did it relate to the fact that we were trying to recover the lost soul of a strange NPC who could use apparently use magic, but apart from that, we simply weren't sure ourselves. We wanted to help her, in part because we'd come all this way already. Once we beat it, we would finally get to hear this mysterious backstory all the NPCs along the way had been alluding to.

Then again, it's not like that would get us any closer to leaving this world, which is what these men were concerned with. Giving them such a pointless reason wouldn't do any good. One step ahead of me, Onee-chan spoke. "So far the quest has spanned all the way from the first floor to the eighth. It has been long and involved many separate steps. Surely, the reward for completion is going to be extremely powerful and greatly aid us in clearing the floors still to come," she lied with perfect eloquence. Well, maybe not so much. We had gotten a few powerful items from various parts of the quest along the way. Even if it hadn't been our goal, there was a pretty good chance that there was some such item awaiting us at the end.

"Ahh, I see." Everyone nodded, an eight floor long campaign quest certainly should yield some extraordinary rewards, the kind of items which would allow us to clear floors and escape this world faster. For now, it looked like we were safe from exile, we had been working on something we could pass off to them as a boon to clearing SAO. The next problem was keeping them from trying to tag along and dying in the process.

"Now then, you've said a few times that it is extremely dangerous. What sort of dangers? I would like to hear at least a little bit about this quest to get a better idea of what it entails."

"Ahh, right..." Onee-chan and I exchanged a series of ideas as she began to recite, modifying little details ahead of time to avoid anything they might find to be a problem with our story. "It started with some rumor NPCs in the «Starting City». They sent us to a man in the city, who sent us to a dungeon. There was a sub-boss there that we had to defeat. After that, there was a man who sent us to an abandoned shack on the second floor with some very, very dangerous traps inside."

"In the shack, we got a book which directed us to a pair of elves on the eighth floor, who sent us to hermit on the second, to a woman on the seventh." as she quickly jumped through the steps, I saw eyebrows all around going up in surprise. It really was a long quest, even by campaign standards. "From there, we had to find a named NPC. It took a while, but we found her on the first floor." Careful to skip over what happened there, she jumped ahead again. "She sent us to a cave. This is the part we're working on right now. We have to collect four orbs from four of the most dangerous locations imaginable. So far, we've managed to collect the first two."

As she said that, I materialized the red and yellow orbs from our inventory, holding them up for the group to see. To stress the danger, she explained, "For the first, we had to climb a mountain, following nothing but a bunch of cryptic clues to navigate past deadly traps, then fight Boss which grew much stronger over the course of the fight. It even had an attack that destroyed our armor and damaged our weapons."

From there, it would be too hard to explain that it changed into some sort of invincible system-monster thing, so she tweaked the story. "Once we beat it, some sort of ghost thing that couldn't be attacked, but spit fire everywhere, attacked us and we had to run through a gauntlet of traps, hordes of mobs, and dangerous environments, including what appeared the be the inside of a volcano."

Throughout most of her explanation, I could see most of the captains around the end of the table beginning to go white at her descriptions. It seemed that the 'extremely life threatening' thing was beginning to sink in.

"For the second, we had to fight another Boss. It hid in the floor and walls, only vulnerable when it came out to attack, and as we dealt damage it split and multiplied until we were seriously outnumbered. After we beat it, we had to fight through another horde of mobs..." Here came the tricky bit.

Going on slowly, made sure to choose her words with care. "This took place on the second floor. The dungeon entrance was in the deepest part of the ravine that ringed the floor. As soon as we made it out of the dungeon, the ravine itself closed in to try and crush us. It was all we could do to get out of there." Ok, that really wasn't what happened, but it was a lot better than trying to explain about some strange mob portal thing which didn't even exist anymore... probably.

By this point, most of the captains had a look like they no longer wanted to touch this case with a ten foot pole. Unfortunately...

"Ahh, I see, so that's why you needed to get stronger, to clear the next area with a better safety margin." There's no such thing as a 'safety margin' in these places I grumbled internally while he continued talking. "Ok, here's the plan. We take our highest level members, because at the moment they _are_ stronger than you. Between the higher levels and the increase in members, it should decrease the level of danger greatly."

"Wait, that's-" we started.

"We have the resources to complete this quest, and doing so will give us the power to clear floors faster. Prompt completion will therefore be the best option, as the sooner we can gain access to whatever boon this grants, the faster we can escape this death game," Kains explained in an offhand way, as if we already understood that.

Well, it's not like we didn't, but he wasn't thinking about this all wrong. These were _not_ normal dungeons that we could just bulk up on members and force our way through. Actually, we still had no idea what might happen if we brought more people in to fight one of these Bosses. Doing something like he suggested could be as likely to get us all killed as it would raise our chances of success.

However, it seemed that we no longer had a choice in the matter. "I'm sending a message to the members I've chosen to join the raid, we'll be heading out immediately."


	163. Chapter 152

**Some Unwanted Company**** Chapter 152**

—This is going to be a disaster, I thought, agitated. We were waiting in the common area on the first floor of the «Black Iron Castle», the members of the raid coming quickly from wherever they had been when they received the call. Including Kains and ourselves, we currently numbered five. Assuming he had sent for a full party, there were still two left to arrive.

—Let's make the best out of it. I know we'll probably lose some of them, but we have the same problem at Boss Raids. The difficulty level is just too high to get through without casualties. Let's just hope the extra members make things easier, that's what they're here for after all. Onee-chan reasoned. Still, it wasn't a good, going in expecting to lose people. Didn't any of these men realize that? We were about to go somewhere where some of them would most likely die, didn't they fear for their lives?

It was then that the sixth member of our group entered the common area. Looking over, I was surprised to see a familiar face. It was Vale, of all people. Wait, it made sense actually, he had already been on the frontlines back on the eleventh floor, so of course he would be one of the strongest members available. Easily recognizing us as well, he raised a hand slightly in greeting, but didn't say anything.

After the tank stopped a short distance away, I glanced around. Besides ourselves, the heavily armored Kains and Vale were equipped for the front line, with a mace and one-handed sword, respectively. The other two were outfitted for the back line, spears hung back over their shoulders. Their armor was a little lighter too. When they had introduced themselves, I noted that the one with spiky brown hair was named Minn, while the one with slightly longer black hair was named FuriousKingdom, though he said to just call him Furi.

After another minute, the last member arrived, a spear user who was a slightly younger, in his teens. He also had blue hair which reminded me a bit of the late Diabel. After taking a moment to remember our old friend, I noticed that he wore a distinctive brown cape, opposed to the others' green ones. It looked to be much better quality too, maybe he bought it himself or received it as a rare monster drop.

Glancing back, I saw that Vale wore a blue cape, before returning my attention to the young man. He introduced himself as Lianna, explaining that he'd originally made his character female before all this started. We could call him Li.

"Ok men, we can talk on the way," Kains instructed, swinging a hand forward like an order to march. This guy was... pretty weird, I noted for the hundredth time. Maybe he had actually been in the military before this? That might explain his peculiar attitude and mannerisms. I wasn't really sure what it was, but he somehow got everyone walking right away. Walking near back of the group, on the left, we listened while Kains went over the info the soldiers needed to know.

"Today's mission is to clear a high level dungeon," he said, as if it could possibly be so simple.

"What are we dealing with?" prompted Furi, who was diagonal to us. Past Kains in the middle, I couldn't see him very well.

"You should ask the girls, they've been doing the quest alone up to this point," Kains pointed out. Hearing that, everyone turned to look at us, Furi craning his neck to look around Kains. Well, if they were coming along, they had better know everything they needed to to survive...

Thinking as much, we both quickened our pace, moving a little farther to the left of the group so they could all see us more clearly as we walked. "Ok, there's some important information about the dungeon we'll have to clear. First and foremost, it is going to be the most dangerous place you have ever stepped foot. Understood?" Onee-chan aimed a piercing look at the group, so intense she got the soldiers to nod carefully.

"Now, there are a number of different problems. First, we don't know what we're up against before we go in. It could be anything. And I mean it, _an-y-thing_." She took a deep breath. "So far, the dangers we've faced have ranged from hoards of low or mid level mobs, flying mobs, overpowered mobs, to crushing traps, spike traps, falling traps, steep cliffs, lava traps, infinite teleportation traps, overpowered physical attacks, elemental attacks, equipment destroying attacks, physical invulnerability, and enemies cloning themselves." Finishing the whole list in one go, she drew in a sharp breath afterward before returning her gaze to the soldiers.

After they all stared for a couple moments, she went on. "Those are just the dangers we have faced already. There could be new ones, old ones, or a mixture of both in the next dungeon. Also, there is a very good chance that the area will block teleportation. If things go bad, you're going to have to run for it." Now that one got them. Teleport Crystals were the final safety net. As long as you had one, if you could keep calm enough to use it, you practically couldn't die. That automatically put anti-crystal areas at the top of the danger level.

"The monsters we fight are going to be strong, really strong. Make sure to always prioritize safety, over everything else." Again, she aimed a pointed gaze at them and they nodded. Unfortunately, I noted from the look on Kains' face that he seemed to think words were only directed at the soldiers, not him. Before Onee-chan could speak any further, we arrived at the «Teleport Gate».

"What floor are we headed to?" Kains asked. We answered that we had to go to the fifth floor, and warped up, setting out immediately across the barren, dry landscape. Before we could go to the dungeon, we had to head back to the cave and read the riddle detailing where we would actually find it.

Walking out across the desert, Onee-chan lead the way. Since it would be incredibly suspicious to spin around in circles in order to discern our heading, she just walked whichever way she felt like. There were no major landmarks along the way, and after a few minutes Kains asked how we were navigating without a map. I quickly assured him that we remembered the way, even though we totally didn't. How could we possibly remember when there wasn't even a path to go by?

Well, even if he didn't believe us, he didn't have a choice once we arrived at the cave entrance. They all placed their hands against the magical barrier sealing the entrance, asking how we were supposed to get inside. That's when we explained that we needed to follow the riddle and took them around the side of the cave, to the little stone monument.

After clearing away the sand that had settled back in place over the round stone, we knelt down to read and copy down the third section of the dais.

『Amidst the soft firs and hard oaks of the misty forest, there lies a forbidden grove. In the far southern reaches, it stands apart from all around it. Within the grove, trespass on its inhabitants to rouse their master, the 『The Colossus』. If you can defeat him, he will yield the orb for which you search. Beware however, for a Colossus will not be stopped by death alone.』

Oh great, this one was actually telling us that the Boss wouldn't stop, even when we killed it. Having copied down that depressing... well, this one wasn't really a riddle, it was pretty straightforward actually. 'Misty forest' obviously referred to the third floor, and it even said where we would find the area we were looking for once there.

"Ok, now we can head to the dungeon," Onee-chan said, though, by the sound of it, it wouldn't be a dungeon so much as a small field. I almost felt grateful, it made this one seem like it wouldn't be as difficult as the first two. Though... that didn't make much sense, they should definitely be getting harder. That thought made me worry. Maybe it was supposed to sound easy so we would be surprised by the danger and die before we could respond. Would the quest try to trick us like that?

"Well, I wouldn't put it past them..." I mumbled. This crazy quest had already tried to kill us in all manner of ways, who could say what else would happen...

While I worried away about what would come next, we cut back across the empty desert, aiming for «Reu» so we could teleport down to the third floor.

_Author Note: Sorry for the slowness, I've been distracted the last few days._


	164. Chapter 153

**Easy, or Deceptively Easy?**** Chapter 153**

_Author Note: Ugh, I feel terrible today. I'm going to get some chocolate and read Clannad. I'll write this later..._

_-Next day- Ok, I'm kind of better today. I'm going to be busy later this week, so I definitely want to finish with this orb by then, so I don't leave you hanging for like 5 days or something while I work like a turtle through the last of it. Mm, on the other hand, I might just include it all in this chapter. *Shrug* Well, I'll see when I get there I guess._

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Li asked shortly after we moved off of the safe path and into the dark, dangerous, confusing, pitfall-ridden, monster-infested forest. The path didn't go south, and we were already sure that there would be no path leading to the deathtrap of an area we were heading. It wasn't a place people would find by accident.

"Don't worry, totally not a problem. We-" Onee-chan cut her sentence short as a number of random monsters pounced the moment she looked away. With a glance at the suddenly appearing red cursors, a flash of movement cut all the low level things into pieces before she looked back to continue speaking. "-used to cut through here a lot."

"I... can see that..." he mumbled, chuckling awkwardly with the other members of the party save for Kains, who didn't appear to even be following the conversation. Instead, his eyes were glued to our surroundings, as if there was something on this floor that could actually fight us. Well, anything normal anyway. Once we stepped into that crazy no-such-thing-as-balance area, if we expected level-balance, we'd be no better off than if we threw ourselves over the side of the floating castle.

Oh wait, bad example... I murmured internally when I realized what I'd just thought, causing Onee-chan to give off a slight giggle which no one else noticed.

"Something funny?" Kains asked, looking her way. Ok, maybe not. He sure was sharp, wasn't he...?

"No, nothing really," she answered dismissively. Apparently feeling no curiosity nor need to pry, Kains dropped it without batting an eyelash. Also very... something else? I honestly couldn't even put words to it at this point, I'd never met anyone quite like him before. Just a short time ago he was threatening us with exile, now here he was helping us (though we really didn't want his help) complete this quest.

What was his goal here? What was he getting at? Before, he'd made it sound like his intention was totally singular. Clear the SAO as fast as possible. For not helping, he threatened the worst punishment against us, but the moment we offered up something, he latched onto it like some kind of deranged sucker-fish. Normally, I'd peg him as looking to gain the whatever rewards came at the end of the quest, but...

Casting a sidelong glance, I caught a glimpse of the older man out of the corner of my eye. He wore his dull reddish full plate armor as if he didn't feel the weight. Like the other captains, he had some unnecessary decoration, the colored armor, the silky cape, though the most notable thing had to be the slight gold trim on the cape's border. However, apart from those little things, I didn't see anything to set him apart from anyone else.

The clothes beneath his armor were plain and brown, showing no signs of individuality or custom tailoring, nor did his monstrous tower shield bear decoration, bordering, or even a design across the large front surface, something even the poorest adventurers did regularly. His mace could be considered even worse, as it didn't even have a spiked head, or any head really. I would have as soon called it a club, if that were a useable type of weapon. Well, by the looks of it, clubs had just been shuffled into maces, apparently.

So what was it about him that commanded respect? Somehow, he'd managed to assemble all the other captains behind his banner, using his influence to threaten both Thinker and ourselves He was straightforward, incredibly bossy, didn't take no for an answer... Considering the short mental list, I mentally tacked on 'bossy' again, for good measure. So far that was all I could puzzle up out of his strange personality.

But still, the big thing was his flip-flop once we had told him about the quest. What goal could possibly cause him to change sides like that? Even more than that, why didn't anyone there seem to care? They all must have their own ideas and goals, if they were supporting him because his goals matched their own, why didn't any of them care when he totally switched sides?

Sudden movement made me blink. I heard a shattering sound and looked up, my entire train of thought coming to a crashing halt. To my left, I saw my hand extended, little blue polygons floating away shortly before disappearing. Between some logic and Onee-chan telling me what happened, I quickly pieced together that a monster had jumped at me and I'd punched it by reflex. Huh...

What was I just thinking about again? I blinked a few times, the sudden distraction left me momentarily unable to remember the last few thoughts that came before it. Shaking my head a little, I remembered, but Onee-chan told me silently to put those thoughts on hold for now. Without any more information, we probably wouldn't be able to figure anything out. Besides that, she had a feeling that we were almost there.

As expected, it only took a few more minutes before we came to a 'wall'. The 'wall' wasn't really a solid object, it was like the mini-dungeons we'd seen on this floor before, so many trees packed all on top of each other that they created an impenetrable wall. None of them had low branches either, which may have allowed a clever person to climb over top.

Coming to this barrier, Onee-chan turned automatically to the left, and we kept walking. A little ways around the barrier, we came to a small opening. If it was like the last dungeon, there would be a magical barrier blocking the entrance, which we could break by pressing the orb we received from the last dungeon into it. Walking up to the entrance, we all stopped and I reached out, rapping my knuckles against the barrier twice to reveal the yellow tinted surface and nodding.

Onee-chan drew the yellow orb from our inventory then pressed it into the barrier. It shattered, and we momentarily caught many of the falling shards before moving forward again.

"Wait, what did you just do?" The words came from Kains, stopping us mid-stride.

Turning back, Onee-chan answered off the top of her head, "They're some kind of magic shards. We don't know what they do, but they don't weigh anything and we've found them a couple times during this quest, so they may come in handy at some point." She didn't give anything more than that, but Kains found the explanation good enough, because he shrugged and said to move on.

Walking past the impenetrable wall of trees, we carefully entered a large field. In fact, when I looked around, it seemed that this one field occupied the entire area enclosed between the trees and the outer edge of this floor.

Just looking across the grassy expanse, I made a rough guess of maybe two hundred meters(656ft) across. It was somewhat circular, except where the southern edge of the floor cut it off short.

Within the field, there were a number of mobs, plant types that looked like trees. Apart from that, there was just lots of grass, and what looked like a ruined building, which the mobs stood around at the center of the field.

"『Within the grove, trespass on its inhabitants to rouse their master,』" Vale quoted briefly, holding the notepad with the passage written down. "Guess we just kill these guys and the boss comes out?" Since we were all in agreement already, no one answered, and we all pressed toward the center of the clearing, many light metal sounds ringing as we all drew our weapons.

However, we were suddenly stopped again when Kains called out for us to hold on. "Are you really going to fight like that?" He asked, his question clearly directed at the two of us.

Confused by his sudden question, Onee-chan answered, "Of course." She couldn't think of any way to elaborate on that. So instead, she added, "How else would we?"

Shaking his head, Kains answered, "With Sword Skills, preferably."

"We do fight with Sword Skills..." what he was saying made no sense, why in the world would we not use Sword Skills?

Levelling an annoyed expression at us, Kains explained, "There's no way you can activate Sword Skills, with an «Irregular Equipped» status like that."

However, an explanation containing some term we didn't know didn't really explain anything now, did it? "Well, I've never heard of «Irregular Equipped» before, what does it mean?" I asked to get some clarification on it.

"It means that the System Assist won't allow you to activate Sword Skills when you have a bad combination of weapons in your hands. Unlike a sword and shield, a sword and dagger isn't supported, so it won't work. That's what it means." He shook his head again.

"Well, whether you say that or not..." Onee-chan started, taking a step away before throwing out a couple basic Sword Skills from both of her weapons. Then she turned back, and shrugged. "I don't know, I've never heard of that before, but..." without anything else to say, she just gave another big shrug, with an expression that read 'I don't get it' like the words were written on her face.

However, while she was doing this, I was puzzling through a reason. Chances are, if it was the System Assist not allowing Sword Skills, then that was one more function we'd broken way back when. Jeez, it seemed like the System Assist was used for everything, actually assisting with attacks was looking more and more like a minor function...

"I... see... Well, whether it makes any sense or not, I've seen it with my own eyes, so I can't deny it. For whatever reason, it seems that there is some sort of bug which does not stop you from activating your Sword Skills. However, I would recommend you change your build, because you never know when such a game bug will be resolved. It would be better if you don't suddenly find yourselves unable to fight."

"True, thank you for the advice," Onee-chan bowed slightly. —I'm pretty sure that will never happen, we seriously trashed our character data, I don't think Kayaba is going to be able to fix it, I pointed out to her.

—Yeah, I don't think so either... After a brief, confused pause, she managed to form the rest of the thoughts into something understandable. —But it's not good that the way we fight _normally_ shouldn't be allowed. We may want to change something just to keep from being called on it. Yeah, that was true, it probably wasn't the best idea, even if we just passed it off as 'some game bug'. It would probably still make people suspicious of us. We'd have to think about that, but later. We had much more pressing things to do right now.

Moving forward once more, we carefully drew agro from one of the mobs, named 『Sacred Ent』, and pulled it away from the others. It basically looked like a big tree, some of it's branches contorted to resemble arms. It didn't have legs though, moving itself with a snarl of roots which seemed to squirm of their own accord, somehow managing to propel the huge monster toward us. It wasn't fast, but it was a decent speed for moving in such a strange way.

Once we'd drawn it away, we shifted into a battle formation. Li, Minn, and Furi stood in the back with their long spears, while the rest of us stood on the front line. It was a balanced group, though I guess that was expected, since Kains had chosen the members. For a few minutes, we cautiously observed its attack patterns while dealing a bit of damage here and there, until we were sure enough that we understood the ents' and really started fighting.

Overall, the ent was strong. As expected of one of these special mobs, it wasn't lacking much in any particular category. It's attacks were powerful, its defense high, and hp pool enormous. It wasn't the fastest thing ever, but the speed at which it could swing its huge wooden arms was much better than I would ever expect of such a thing.

However, despite its inherent strengths, an ent on the third floor, no matter how much stronger than it should be, was no match for seven people of frontline level. We took out its two bars of hp without much trouble and moved on to the next one.

It took a while, there were a good number of ents in the field. However, there was nothing else to get in our way, no surrounding mobs, no traps, nothing dangerous at all. Because of that, we were able to take short breaks once in a while, between battles.

Like that, a few hours passed and we cleared the thirty or so ents from the clearing. Once the last one fell, scattering to the wind, just as everyone was letting the tension out of their shoulders, Kains called, "Careful now!" reminding them that finishing the last ent should bring out the boss. Everyone looked around, slowly backing toward the entrance again in anticipation of the next, largest danger yet.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help but freak out. Those ents had been strong, but nowhere near the level of those stone statues we had fought on the first floor, each with enough strength to sweep us clear off the side of the mountain in a single hit. They weren't even as strong as one of the many copies of the second floor's boss after it had split its strength up so many ways. Please, please let this Boss be nothing special, I prayed repeatedly while waiting.

And then it finally appeared. Not by spawning, and not by coming into the clearing from somewhere else. In the center of the field, what seemed like a ruined building, suddenly moved. Looking over, we all stared, absolutely dumbfounded as the crumbling structure suddenly shifted, the stones grinding against each other as the entire thing began to shift position.

Then, it sat up. The first thing that became apparent, it was humanoid. The second: it was... huge. No, even that couldn't really describe its size. That the 'building' I'd seen before was no more than it's two feet, next to each other. The rest of its body had been behind them, blocked from my view.

As it pushed itself up, I could feel my jaw falling open. With its every motion, a strong vibration made the ground beneath me shudder. It was like it created small earthquakes by moving. Finally having reached its feet, I had to tilt my head back to look up at the... thing. It was so tall, I had to use the next floor as a measure to guess at its height. About a third of the way up, that put it at thirty meters(98ft) tall.

Standing now, the thing which could probably crush a city, let out a booming bellow, so powerful it created a windy force that pushed us all back a little. With that, the red cursor appeared above it, followed in a moment by its name, 『The Colossus』, underscored by a single health bar.

Still staring, unable to do anything else, I mumbled, "Shit..."

_Author Note: I'll end it here for now since this chapter is already pretty long. The Boss Fight can have its own chapter. Also, I didn't have as much time as I thought I would, so I probably won't get through all of this before I get busy. I'll try to get as much done as I can though, so I can finish this off without driving you crazy from waiting. :P_

_On a totally unrelated note: I managed to get My Dearest unstuck from my brain! I only had to listen to it six hundred eleven times..._


	165. Chapter 154

**The Colossus**** Chapter 154**

_Author Note: Hehe, Shadow of the Colossus reference? Close, but not quite..._

While we were all standing in a stupor, the Colossus began to lift its... arm? Looking more closely when it caught my attention, I saw that its left arm was humanoid, with normal shoulder and elbow joints, but at the wrist, there was no hand. Instead, a massive column of stone was connected. Despite its oddly flat sides, there was only one way to describe it: a sword. No, that didn't mean...

As it hefted the ridiculous weapon up high overhead, Kains suddenly shouted. "Everyone run! And make sure you jump when that thing comes down!" As strange as the second command sounded, it didn't keep anyone from following the first. One more call for everyone to follow him, and we all dashed to the right, counterclockwise around the Boss.

As we ran, the Boss slowly turned to track us, its massive arm slowly but surely moving up to take position over its shoulder.

"I recognize this thing!" Kains shouted all of a sudden.

"How is that possible?" I shouted back in surprise.

"That thing is straight out of Shadow of The Colossus!" When we both asked what that was, he quickly explained, "It's an old game, made back when _I_ was a kid," putting emphasis on it because that probably meant it was before we were born. "This thing was one of the bosses."

Oh great, now we were fighting bosses from other games? "Everyone, look out, it's about to swing its sword down at us." Kains spoke with a strict tone of command. The fact that I could hear the edginess in it meant that he had finally figured out why we hadn't wanted them to come. A few moments later, the massive sword finally reached its full height, before it would come crashing back down. While I prayed that it couldn't use Sword Skills with that thing, the weapon began to glow.

"Jump!" Kains shouted the moment he saw the glow. With a flash, streaking across my vision, I kicked off hard, jumping as high into the air as I could on such short notice. Hardly an instant after my feet left the earth, a deafening crash exploded much too close behind me. I twisted, turning in midair, but couldn't see anything as I was met with an exploding dust cloud.

Rolling through the obscuring cloud, I hit the ground awkwardly, landing on my butt and rolling backward a short distance before I got managed to right myself. Next to me, Onee-chan was standing up as well, looking a bit dizzy, like I felt. Meanwhile, everyone else was quite some distance behind, the crazy stone sword fully embedded in the ground hardly 2 meters(6.5ft) behind them, a distance only slightly wider than the weapon itself.

As the men got slowly back to their feet, some of their hp bars began to shrink. Kains and Li were ok, but Furi, Minn, and Vale all lost between a quarter and a third of their total health. There's no way they could take just that much from a direct hit, so...

"Careful, if you're standing on the ground near one of its attacks, the shockwave alone will hurt you. As for getting hit, don't." Kains neatly explained what I'd been working through.

Dropping that train of thought, I looked back at the huge stone sword, making sure it was still immobilized in the dirt while stating, more than asking, "If you're sure its from this other game, you should know how we can kill it." Given its massive size and seemingly impenetrable rock-covered flesh, it should have way, way more than one bar of hp. That must mean there's some sort of trick to it...

While thinking this, Kains stumbled through an explanation. "I think you had to hit it with a sword, I mean it was an ancient sword. No, you had to stab it to kill it."

"You're not being very helpful here," Onee-chan complained anxiously as the Colossus began to move again, forcefully beginning to draw the sword up out of the earth once more.

"Sorry, that was over twenty years ago." Holding his hand to his head with an intense look of concentration, the older man spoke carefully. "You reveal the sigils by reflecting the light of the sun, then climb the Colossus and stab the sigils until they disappear. When all the sigils are gone, the Colossus will die." Finishing, he opened his eyes again.

Right then, the ground apparently couldn't restrain the Boss's strength any longer. With a heavy rumble, the weapon jerked up from the ground, momentarily darting upward from the extra force, before the giant regained control, turning once more to face us.

"I'm pretty sure the first part doesn't count here, we don't have weird swords with power over the sun. We'll just have to stab the sigils to kill it."

"How do we stab them if we can't find them?" Vale asked, having rejoined us somewhere in the middle of the conversation.

"All of them had one directly on the top of their heads," Kains explained quickly, eyeing the beast as it began to lift its sword once more. "For this one..." He grit his teeth, brows furrowing. "Stomach. This one has a second on its stomach." He let out a slow breath after remembering that. "Let's go, it's coming again." While we began move, I heard Kains grumble, "thing's a lot faster than it was back then..."

Moving at a quick pace again, he explained, "When that thing gets its sword stuck in the ground after an attack, you can run up and climb onto it. Rei, Rai, you two do it." He didn't bother giving a reason, since it was so obvious. Everyone else had armor ranging medium to heavy plate; we wore armor that most people wouldn't think to be any different than regular clothing.

"Its body should be covered with thick fur and big chunks of stone. You can use them to climb up and reach the sigils." Done explaining, he called, "Now everyone watch out, it's going to use the same attack as before."

After a few more moments passed, the Colossus finally finished raising its weapon over its head, initiating the System Assist. That's probably why Kains mentioned how much faster it was here, it probably should have taken a long time on the downswing also. Instead, as soon as the glow showed up around the blade, I kicked off hard, turning in midair to watched the glowing mass of stone streak down from the sky in hardly a second, striking the ground so hard it threw a cloud of dust over my view again.

Once I landed, rolling backward to come to my feet, I ran back through the cloud toward where the sword had struck. I didn't move very quickly, or I might miss the weapon I was looking for in the obscuring cloud. Then, I suddenly tripped, coming down and smacking my face right into something hard. Wincing in pain, I slowly pushed myself up, finding that I'd hit one of the soldiers.

Looking down as I rubbed my forehead, I found that I was looking at his knees. My head must have hit his knee armor, I thought, still a bit dazed. But if I was looking at his legs... I looked down, under myself and back toward where his head should be. There, I found it was Vale, staring with a complicated look, something like a cross between amazement and horror. Realizing the position I was in, I shot up to my feet, both hands coming to cover the space between my legs.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I blushed momentarily before shaking my head, hair whipping back and forth around me. Then I kicked hard against the ground, jumping over Vale as the dust began to clear and I could make out the stone sword nearby. I'd deal with that issue later... probably... When I found Onee-chan moving in the same direction, I banished all further thoughts on it from my mind. No matter how simple Kains made it sound, there was no way climbing this crazy thing could be easy, I had to focus.

Still, it was a miracle that Kains was here, actually. What percentage of the people in this world would actually be old enough to have played a game from all the way back then, so they would know the method for defeating this thing? If not for him, we probably would have been beating on its feet with our swords in an attempt to kill it somehow.

Reaching the stone blade, we kicked hard and dashed up the length in a moment. Now at its wrist, I found its forearm covered with a large piece of smooth rock, shaped like some sort or gauntlet. After a short distance, it expanded into a wide cylinder which looked like it would make it hard to get around.

—Come on, Onee-chan silently urged me forward. Kicking off hard, we shot up the smooth rock gauntlet as the angle of its wrist became increasingly steep. Jumping as high as our Strength would allow, we hit the outer edge of the gauntlet's wide edge, barely tumbling on top. It was slanted down almost forty-five degrees, so once we were on top, I found myself desperately trying to cling to the smooth stone to keep from slipping back off.

When I was about to lose to gravity and fall, everything suddenly began moving. It was the Colossus, it was starting to pull its sword out of the ground. A few more seconds, then a sudden blast of momentum hit me as it retrieved the weapon, its arm lurching upward shortly.

The force was so strong it reversed my fall, easily sending me airborn. I turned over once in the air, then found that I was no longer on its arm. Instead, I was falling the space between its arm and right leg. Spinning, I got my feet under me and braced for a hard landing.

A crash, roll, and tumble later, I staggered to my feet, both legs feeling like I'd broken them falling from a height like that. Trying to shake it off, I looked for the group, only then noticing that the Colossus was moving differently. One of its legs was raised, and as I watched, it slammed its foot into the ground.

A feeling like an earthquake shook everything, and I felt all the force explode up through my feet, throwing me to the ground as reverberations racked my body. My vision went white briefly, a few seconds passing before I could even regain my senses.

Pushing myself up with a shaky hand, I staggered up once more. My hp had fallen by a little over half from that attack. I wasn't so worried about that as I was about the crippling pain it caused. I had gotten used to a lot, but that was just too much!

Running awkwardly toward where I saw the others, it felt like I had to force all of my muscles to move. Onee-chan moved ahead of me, having managed to dodge that stomping attack. She met up with the others and passed their conversation to me while I slowly made my way in their direction.

"It has some kind of gauntlet that we couldn't get past. With another go, we might be able to go over it, but I don't know. Is there anything else we can do?" She asked Kains, who stood rubbing his forehead in concentration for a short time.

"Ah, that's right. In the original game, there was a metal plate in the area where you fought this Colossus." I immediately thought, there were other things like this?! But shook off the thought as he went on. "You had to get it to strike the metal plate, to break off its gauntlet so you could begin to climb."

I arrived as he was finishing the explanation. However, after a short look around, we said together, "But... there's no metal plate here."

Apparently having already realized this, Kains said slowly, "That's our problem." He rubbed the back of his head, but couldn't come up with anything, and gave a big shrug of his shoulders. "Sorry, we aren't much use in a fight like this, besides for keeping it distracted while you climb anyway..

"Now if only we could find a way to start climbing..." I muttered.

"Careful, it's coming again," came a warning from Minn, putting everyone's full attention on the Colossus once more. Glancing back at the young man who had just spoken, I noticed that all the spear wielders had put away their weapons. Kains wasn't kidding, normal methods didn't mean anything against this thing...

Meanwhile, the Boss had raised its sword about halfway, and we started to move around it in preparation for the next attack.

I blinked, and nearly missed it. With a flash of light, the stone sword began to glow. It was so fast, I was halfway through kicking my foot against the ground when the sword, thrust forward faster than my eyes could follow, crashed into the ground just behind.

White pain filled my senses once more, and I didn't notice the bodies landing on top of me until a few moments later, when I desperately tried to rise, only to find myself pinned under a number of other people. One by one, people rolled off until I managed to stand on dead legs. My hp was down near thirty percent, so I downed an hp potion while looking around.

"Ugh, sorry, it also has a thrusting attack," came from Kains. He glanced around, then, "Damn it, we lost Li." Looking around, I suddenly realized he was right. I hadn't even heard the sound marking his death, but he was gone. Glancing up into the top corner of my view, I saw that his hp was fully depleted. In the next few moments, his name disappeared from our party list because he 'logged off'. No one needed to say what that meant.

After a few moments of silence, Kains finally let out a deep sigh before speaking again. "It seems that his thrust is a lot more dangerous due to the System Assist. Everyone, be extra careful from now on..." That was all he could really say.

Unfortunately, the Colossus had already recovered after its attack. We watched as it yanked the sword up from the ground once more. My eyes followed the heavy blade as it bobbed, remembering how it had thrown us off last time. We would have to make it up past its gauntlet before then, or the same thing would happen again.

"That's it," I said without realizing it, then blinked. Everyone was looking at me. I tossed the idea to Onee-chan, who grimaced.

Then, "Better than anything I've come up with," she admitted with a shrug. I saw a look of confusion pass between everyone else. —Huh, we might not want to make it so obvious that we have telepathy... I muttered silently. "True true," she giggled, knowingly making it worse. I just shook my head with a sigh. Despite their looks, I didn't bother explaining. "Ok, we have a plan, let's get ready for its next attack," Onee-chan said, perfectly ignoring their looks which called for some sort of explanation.

Kains shrugged his shoulders a bit at that point, "As long as it works." Then he gave a deep nod. Running again, we all watched in silence, eyes narrowed, on the lookout in case it decided to use that thrust attack again. Thankfully, the slower overhead blow came down at us and we all had time to dodge out of the way.

We waited for the dust to clear before moving in. Instead of running up to its arm and making another attempt at scaling over its gauntlet, we crouched low at the very end of its blade, where it stuck into the ground.

If it pulled its blade from the ground the same way as it had been doing so far, hopefully the huge amount of momentum would throw us on top of the Colossus. Or at least that's what I was hoping for as we waited a dozen seconds for the Boss to recover.

It leaned forward slightly, signalling that it was about to pull back the weapon, and we braced ourselves, on all fours. With a heave, it felt like a ton of bricks dropped on my back. Gritting my teeth, it took everything I had to keep myself from being crushed flat against the flat stone blade. Just a few moments later, the sword reached the top of its swing and I felt the force pushing me upward vanish.

"Now!" Shouting together, we kicked off from the stone before our own momentum carried us out of range. Moving in a shallow arc, we quickly flew in toward its giant stone chest. While we focused on falling down more, «Acrobatics» kicked in, even with its low level, allowing us to change our course slightly in mid-air. It just took a little, bringing us down on some sort of architectural piece of stone circling its waist.

The landing wasn't pleasant; our momentum carried us across the skinny ring and directly into the stomach of the Colossus. But it didn't end there, with the giant monster suddenly beginning to twist harshly so I had to throw my hands out and grab onto the tufts of thick fur which completely covered anything left uncovered by masonry.

Everything spun around me as I was whipped back and forth, desperately digging my hands in, like claws, to avoid being dislodged. When it finally ended, I relaxed my grip and sunk down onto the rough stone ring. Now that my brain wasn't rattling around in my head, I realized that for a giant monster of doom, the fur covering it felt pretty nice, kind of like a dog or cat.

Dropping that thought as easily as breathing, I pushed myself up on shaky legs, holding one hand out to grip the fur and steady myself.

"You have to hit the sigil on its stomach! Stab it!" I didn't have to look to know it was Kains shouting, though he was so far away below us, I might not have heard it without heightened senses. I looked up, eyes searching around for the sigil. What did it look like anyway? There was supposed to be one here. I scanned to either side, swaying with my arms held out to try and keep my balance while the Colossus moved continuously, doing whatever it was doing. However, I didn't see anything.

—Can we not kill it this way?! I thought desperately, throwing a glance to Onee-chan who was staring, eyes searching just like mine. Hearing my desperate thought, she reached out, grabbing tight onto the fur on its stomach so she could turn around without losing her balance, and shouted down below. Turning the same way, I looked too.

"We can't find the Sigil! Are you sure it's on the stomach?" In response to her question, Kains started to do something while he ran, but suddenly stopped the movement, his gaze traveling to some other part of the Colossus and he threw himself out of the way as a flash of light shot across the empty space, leaving the massive stone sword embedded a short distance behind the soldiers. I glanced to the edge of my vision and confirmed no one else had been hit before looking back to Kains as he steadied rose.

Raising his hand he pointed at us. What was that supposed to mean? Feeling like maybe he wasn't pointing at us, I glanced behind me and blinked a few times. Directly underneath where our hands were holding tight to the thick fur, there was a giant, blue symbol, its glow emanating through the fur. The symbol itself looked like nothing I'd ever seen before, a number of largely symmetrical patterns accented by a few non-symmetrical ones.

Now that we knew where it was, we both drew our swords, keeping one hand on the fur to hold steady. Among the new Sword Skills we had gained from leveling «One-handed Sword» over two hundred times, surely there was at least one thrust type attack. However, we had never had the chance to go over the new moves or practice any of them. So we would be doing this the old-fashioned way.

Building up strength in my arm, I waited a few moments. Then, with a shout, I stabbed straight forward. My sword cut through the soft fur like butter, then into the creature's flesh. It didn't pierce very deep though. The slight curve to these swords made them rather ineffective for thrusting attacks. Despite that, just our two attacks manage to cut away a very large portion of hp, for a Boss anyway. Probably a full five percent between us. Unlike normal monsters though, a short gush of black, like some kind of dark blood came from the wound for a moment before vanishing.

However, as soon as our blades dealt their damage, the Colossus freaked out, angrily shaking its whole body to throw us off. We were forced to cling to its stomach for some time before it let up. At least with us stabbing it up here, it was too concerned to continue its assault on the soldiers below. And it was so predictable too. We easily figured out that whenever we stabbed it, it would try to shake us off and we only had to hang on for some time before we get another stab in.

A few minutes passed as we continued the simple cycle of stab, hang on for dear life. It took a decent number of stabs and was nearing sixty percent health when the sigil faded from its skin. That meant that there was just the head remaining.

We both looked from side to side, trying to find a way up. Onee-chan, on the left, quickly pointed over to the Colossus' right arm which held the sword and gauntlet. —We can climb up there, the thought and the method entered freely into my mind and we started making our way toward that side of the little ring platform.

After waiting for it to finish a large overhead blow, we managed to jump over the short gap, landing carefully on the backside of the Boss' gauntlet, on one odd protrusion. We climbed from there, moving from one flat spot to the next until we reached its exposed arm. Panting, we grabbed onto the fur and started to climb. Holding on every time it tried to shake us was exhausting. While we slowly made our way up the arm, it began its next attack. We wouldn't be able to reach the top before it struck, so we already knew we would have to hold on for it.

Digging in, we waited a few moments more. Then everything turned to a blur, and the next thing I was aware of was staring at the Colossus from a long way off. I tried to move, and my vision went white. Pain seemed to spike from every part of my body, all at once. My mouth opened, unable to scream even as that action caused burning like a blowtorch to run all along my jaw. Even my hp was deep in the red. What in the world just happened?

One of the backliners, having left the rest of the group to deal with the Colossus for now, came running up to me... to us, when I felt that Onee-chan was next to me, a little to the left. Based on the height I was seeing him from, I was sitting up, though I wasn't sure what I was sitting against.

"You two ok?" he asked, extending a hand and trying to pull me up by the arm. Another flash of white pain overloaded all my senses and the next thing I knew, he wasn't holding my arm anymore, having backed up with a disturbed expression, like he'd seen a ghost. He stood there for some time, obviously unsure of what to do.

I still couldn't get my mouth to work through the pain, so all I could do was wait for it to abate while trying to figure out what just happened.

—We were climbing, and it attacked, so the attack must have thrown us off.

—To throw us off with an attack, it must have been a stab, that would be fast enough to do it.

—Then the pain would be from what we hit.

—At this distance, trees probably?

—That must be it. Bouncing the ideas back and forth in rapid succession, I wasn't sure which ones came from who, but that didn't matter right now. The pain in my arms and legs was finally starting to wear down to a point that I could actually move them. Roughly forcing ourselves up, we leaned heavily on the tree at our backs for support.

After a few tries, Onee-chan requested, "Can you guys keep it busy for a minute more? We need time to recover from that."

Nodding rapidly, Furi said, "Yeah, I'll go tell the others," and ran off. When he heard that message, Kains shouted over, asking what we had to recover from, our health was already rising steadily into the green region.

"Game bug, we can feel pain!" Onee-chan shouted back. She kept the explanation short and simple; whether they believed us or not, it wasn't like they could question us now. As expected, they looked confused, but didn't say anything for now.

We stood there for some time, stretching gingerly. Even so, every movement brought more pangs and lances of pain from all over our bodies.

—Considering the distance and how fast that attack is, it threw us into the tree at... about twenty-five, maybe thirty meters per second(56-67mph).

—That explains why it feels like all our bones are broken, because by all means, they should be. I couldn't help but shudder thinking about that.

It took a couple minutes before we were ready to start up again. In that time, the rest of our group slowly kited the Colossus around, keeping it busy. Once we had recovered enough that the slowly fading pain didn't affect our movements, we dashed over to the rest of the group.

"Sorry for the wait," I said quickly, but Kains waved it off.

"Just get going, the last sigil will be on the top of its head." We both nodded, waiting for the next opportunity to climb the Boss. It didn't take long before the next attack came, and we crouched down on top of the massive blade once more.

For a few seconds, we waited, locking eyes and nodding. Then, the ground shook beneath us. Looking up, we steadied ourselves momentarily before the column of stone was suddenly wrenched upward beneath us. For a moment we fought the run of momentum before the blade stopped and we kicked desperately away again, using what little «Acrobatics» skill we had to aim our trajectory at the flat spot we had stood before.

This time, when I hit the platform at a shallow angle, I slid across it, planting my feet against torso of the Colossus and grabbing onto its fur to keep myself there. Apparently feeling us land, it began to shake violently, but we were already on our feet, leaping away from its torso and onto the gauntlet which had deterred us before.

While it continued to twist and shake in an attempt to dislodge us from the place we no longer were, we scrambled up the flattened notches on the back of its gauntlet, jumping and grabbing onto the thick fur to climb as fast as we could toward its shoulder.

We made it on top just as it finished shaking its torso, to find that there was much more space across its shoulders than with a human. Looking over, I saw its head extended forward slightly, instead of having the neck connect vertically. This gave us plenty of room to dash across its shoulder and make our way up toward its head. We stumbled and had to hold onto the pillars of stone ringing its neck like a collar, or necklace, when it unleashed another another thrust attack.

Once it finished the attack, we released our death grips on the little stone pillars and carefully made our way across the short stretch of its neck extending forward. Like before, we couldn't see the sigil we had to stab, but from the sound of it, we should find it directly on top of the Boss's head.

Slowly, as if it would notice us any moment. It had its head tilted up at a decent angle that we would probably be able to stand directly on top, but for now we inched forward, laying down and just barely peeking up onto the top. Stretching our hands out, we placed them lightly against the fur atop the monster's head, and the glowing blue sigil appeared beneath the slightly thinner fur on its head.

"It's there, just a little more," Onee-chan mumbled encouragingly. Shifting forward once more, we positioned ourselves over the sigil and drew our swords back slowly. I wrapped my left hand tightly in the fur at the back of its head to steady myself and took a deep breath.

"Hah!" stabbing down with our might, our blades sunk deeper than before. It must have been weaker here, and we were anchored here, not fighting to keep our balance on a perilous platform. After completing the attack, we immediately began drawing our weapons back, the Colossus already bellowing terribly. Geysers of the black bloodlike stuff shot out into the air from where we had stabbed.

That's when the 'ground' beneath us suddenly shifted. Hands still wrapped around our swords, we desperately grabbed onto the fur as the whole Colossus bent downward, until we couldn't keep our position stretched across the back of its head.

Gravity overcame what little grip we had with our feet, pulling our lower bodies down while we kept hold with our arms. The top of its head finally became fully vertical, so we now held on, legs dangling down past its forehead as we held on for dear life, something difficult to do with a sword still clutched in one hand.

And then it started shaking. Whipping its head left and right, there was nothing to do but grit our teeth and hold on. It was a good thing we'd anchored our left hands well, because we kept losing grip with our other hands, flailing desperately until we could grab on once more. I don't know how long this went on for, but when it finally, eventually let up, tilting its head upward again, we collapsed atop its head, breathing heavily.

A few more seconds, and we raised our swords again, plunging them in to deal another huge chunk of damage. It only had a little more than a third of its health remaining now. This time, we immediately sheathed our swords while the geysers of black shot out, before it began to shake again.

With both hands holding tight into its fur, we had a much easier time holding on. Even so, I felt like my arms were on fire by this point. Not that it mattered, this body didn't actually have any muscles to strain, to make them feel that way, it was just in my head. So I just kept holding on.

One more stab with everything we had and we cut the Boss down below a third of its life. While being shaken around like ragdolls, I noticed a new problem, the huge sigil we were stabbing vanished beneath us.

If both sigils were gone, shouldn't it be dead? Where else could we hit it to deal damage? Once we were safely back on its neck after it finished trying to shake us off, I called down, "We got both sigils, there must be a third one somewhere!"

Now that we weren't stabbing it anymore, the Colossus had returned its attention to the men on the ground, taking big, ground-shaking steps across the clearing to get in range of them. "There shouldn't be," Kains called back, shouting to be heard over the crashing noise all around us. Since that obviously wasn't the case here, he thought deeply in the time he had.

Looking back up, he shook his head. "I can't remember, you're going to have to search for it. Its probably on an arm or leg, usually on the back." Following his advice, we both looked down. Though we couldn't see them from here, we remembered that both of its legs seemed to be made entirely of stone, so they were out. We had climbed up its right arm and didn't see it, leaving its left arm, or the backside of the right, where we hadn't gone.

Looking across, I saw that its left arm was totally covered in stone up to the elbow. The only places left were along the back sides of its two arms. Given what happened to us the first time we were on its weapon arm, we immediately made our way over to its left side.

There wasn't really anywhere to stand, once past its shoulder we had to climb carefully on its fur, toward its elbow. But halfway there, the big blue sigil lit up beneath us. "Good guess," Onee-chan commented and I grinned. Two more stabs and the last of its hp began to deplete. This time though, it didn't shake the same way as before. Instead, it lifted its arm high up over its head and swung it down in a wide arc. It wasn't as persistent as the other method, but made it much harder to hang on. Still, after it had tried shaking us so much, we weren't about to let go easily.

Barely managing to stick through the movement, we immediately drew out our weapons again and stabbed harshly into its arm again. We were so close now, we just wanted it to die already.

It took two more stabs before the final seal disappeared, the Colossus reaching zero hp. Taking a staggering step, it finally fell, face first, to the ground. Breathing heavily and sore all over, we stood atop its fallen body. The soldiers all shouted out in triumph. This raid had cost us one person, but we had won, taking one step closer to finishing this campaign. Well, that's what it would look like to them anyway.

Except there was one more thing to do...

Looking around, I found the orb, now lying directly atop the head of the fallen Colossus. This one was green. However, I didn't move to pick it up yet. Until now, the real danger had always started after the defeat of the Boss. This big thing here, if it was really dead like it should have been, it would have shattered, leaving nothing behind.

Just the fact that it still remained in this world was proof that it was still alive, and I knew from experience now that it would do _something_ once we retrieved the orb. The question was, what would it do and how could we get away safely?

Approaching the group, Onee-chan explained, "Hold on, this isn't over yet." A look of disbelief appeared on every face but one.

"I believe you are referring to the Boss playing dead over there?" Kains eyed it warily as he spoke.

"Exactly. If you look, the next orb has appeared on its head. However, as soon as we take the orb, it will come back to life and try to kill us in some way. Unfortunately, it will be invincible, so there is no way to fight it. We have to grab the orb and run. I'm not kidding when I say that _anything_ could happen here." She locked gazes with each member of our group before going on.

"Remember what I said before? On the last floor, the walls of a ravine tried to collapse in and crush us. I wouldn't be surprised if the sky started falling on us or something this time. Be. Very. Careful. Now, I would recommend you actually leave the area before us," A reluctant look passed over everyone's faces right away when she said that..

I could understand their feeling, they obviously didn't want to all run away, leaving two young girls behind to face the danger alone. Onee-chan picked up on the thought, quickly following up with, "We run a whole lot faster than you and we've been through this before. We have a better chance of survival than you guys." Slowly, they nodded, though they still didn't look happy about it. Strangely, Kains seemed to be lost in thought at this point, but when I asked him what he was thinking about, he dismissed it as nothing of importance.

Still, as we all set our plan into motion, that concerned, thoughtful look I'd already learned pinpointed something of importance remained on his face. Well, despite my first impressions of him, he was a man who knew how to get things done, that much he had proven fully by this point. If he didn't want to say, I'd leave it at that.

As the men walked back toward the entrance into the hidden grove, Kains started up a conversation, though he spoke in such a soft voice, at a distance so far away even our enhanced senses couldn't pick up what he was saying. As they moved off, they spoke quietly, though I couldn't make out what it might be based on their blank expressions.

The men finally left the area and we turned to face the fallen Colossus. We had maybe a hundred meters to the exit ourselves, a distance we could cross in a matter of seconds. The real question was whether it would follow us out of the grove or not. Not that we could know that until it happened. Walking slowly back to the fallen Colossus, we waited a little longer to make sure we allowed enough time for the others to put put distance between us.

After a few minutes, we figured it was enough time. We didn't need to say anything, we both took a deep breath as usual, our minds and bodies synchronizing again. Ready. Onee-chan reached out, fingers wrapping slowly around the orb. In one motion, she pulled it away from the Colossus and stored it in our inventory.

Turning heel, we retreated quickly toward the exit, though not at a full sprint. As much as we wanted to just tear out of there, we had to keep our eyes on it so we didn't get caught off guard by whatever it did. In the few seconds it took to cross halfway to the exit, the Boss was covered over by a dark fog, its body becoming indistinct. However, it didn't move immediately. Instead, some little, squiggly looking tentacles started to rise up around it, though I couldn't see where any of them came from.

As we passed through the grove's entrance, a man suddenly walked past us, causing us to stop short. "K,Kains-san? What are you doing here?" we both stuttered out in confusion. Why in the world would he come back? He should have realized how dangerous this was by now!

With a small smirk, he replied, "I never told you what happened after you defeated each Colossus." Then he answered the question we didn't ask. "It sends out dark tentacles which will follow you to the ends of the Earth. They cannot be stopped, they cannot be avoided. They will get you." I felt my mouth fall open. "It's obvious that you two will play some role in clearing the game later on. For that reason, I'll lay down my life for yours here."

"W,what?!" we exclaimed, blinking rapidly. Before we could do anything else, the dark tentacles which had been hovering around the fallen Colossus for the last handful of seconds suddenly shot forward. They darted in all directions, twisting in every direction. In an instant, they covered the hundred some meters, a dozen or more piercing straight through Kains. They passed through his shield, his sword, his armor, everything, more bursting up from beneath and lifting him off his feet.

Still looking at us, he spoke, even as his hp dropped by the second. "You will clear the game faster than I will, so if someone has to die, it will be me." Despite the circumstances, he somehow continued to speak in that perfectly earnest tone.

Holding my hands to my mouth, I couldn't say anything. Before I knew it, tears were already running down my cheeks freely. There wasn't anything else to say, was there? Kains gave us a small military salute. Despite the older man's words and actions, a small glaze of terror began to film over his eyes.

Then he shattered, like a thousand panes of glass.

_Author Note: Well there you have it, this chapter was a nightmare to write, between how busy I've been and requiring an interesting scenario to keep it from being boring since the fight itself isn't really the focus. Sorry it took sooooooo looooonnnngggg..._

_Also, an explanation for Kains' death! (From the Inner Area Murder Arc) Good?_


	166. Chapter 155

**The Soldier, The Hermit, and The Widow **** Chapter 155**

"Hey, Onee-chan."

"Yeah?"

"You think we can do it?"

"..."

We were plodding a slow course atop the mountain ridges of the second floor, on our way back to meet the Martial Arts Master. After arriving back at the «Black Iron Castle», we'd recounted the story to the captains, explaining how Kains had died. They excused us without saying a word. It seemed that the guild wouldn't get involved in this again. Not after losing our strongest captain. We hadn't seen Vale there, but it if we'd gotten off like that, I'm sure he was fine too.

Not that I could call this 'fine'. It just didn't feel right, ever since then. He had walked right out, knowing that there was no way to survive, and gave his life in place of ours. How were we supposed to go on, knowing that?

I shook my head, I'd already been through these thoughts a hundred times over. A glance to the side showed the infinite night sky outside the castle. Since we'd already been held up so long, and because we hoped moving would keep us from dwelling on what had happened, we set had out right after the briefing, unwilling to wait for the next day.

My vague thoughts went back to what I'd just asked a minute ago, would we really be able to beat the last dungeon? This last one had a trap which was absolutely guaranteed to kill someone. If the fourth was any worse...

Onee-chan released a low sigh. "For now, let's just get back to the Master. We can leave those questions for another time, when we're prepared to answer them." I gave a small nod.

After some time, we arrived back at the Master's secluded shack. He didn't say anything about how long we had been gone, though I couldn't be sure if it was because he didn't care, or being an AI, he didn't even notice. He just started the next lesson. With everything that had happened, it felt good to just narrow my thoughts, leaving all that out, and think only of my training. It helped ease the guilt.

...

We passed another five days like that, before the Master finally told us we were ready. A couple short fights, in which we each managed to stalemate him, proved it.

After he told us we could go, he suddenly asked how we were doing on our quest to help Ferin. As soon as I heard those words, it felt like he'd dropped a house on top of us. Still, I couldn't miss that it was a bit strange for the NPC to be the one to bring up a topic. We hesitantly said we were working on it. All this training was so we would be able to get through.

"And how is Fiona taking it?" he followed with another question.

"She's..." Onee-chan suddenly stopped, so I picked up for her.

"She's..." I stopped. When I thought back, trying to remember when we'd told her we'd found Ferin, nothing came to mind. It couldn't be...

"We forgot to tell her!?"

...

Arriving breathlessly at the outskirts of the small «Maren» on the icy seventh floor about four minutes later, we navigated through the town we hadn't been to for some time now. It didn't take long to find the house we were looking for, all the way on the end, with no occupants save for the old woman we had come to speak to.

As every time before, we made our way through the silent corridors, turning into the little Western kitchen area with a small table in the middle of the floor. There sat Fiona, still not appearing to have gotten up since the last time we met.

As soon as we entered the room, the woman's face lit up, taking years from her appearance. "Have you found my daughter?" she asked, and we nodded, though, that was followed with a small frown.

"Yes, however..." Onee-chan withdrew Ferin from our inventory and handed the small crystal over while continuing to speak. "The things chasing her had taken her memories and sealed her consciousness. When we arrived, she couldn't maintain herself in human form and was forced to transform into a crystal."

While Onee-chan explained, Fiona was looking down, the little stone in her hands, stroking it with one finger.

What followed was... rather odd. The two NPCs talked to each other, which was already strange because, how should they know what to say in the first place? Well, this whole scenario could have been laid out already, but I had to doubt it considering how none of this actually showed up in our 『Quest』 menu. These NPCs seemed to be making it up as they went along, however that worked.

The second reason that the conversation was so strange was that we only heard one side of it. Since Ferin could only speak through telepathy now, we weren't in range and couldn't hear any of it. For a couple minutes, we just sat there and listened to Fiona's side of the conversation, unable to make sense of any of it without hearing Ferin.

Nevertheless, we waited for them to finish and gingerly took back the little crystal. Fiona thanked us for visiting and letting her see her daughter again. We promised to recover her memories, then we went on our way.

It was time to move on to the last of our training.

_Author Note: Yeah, none of these segments were anywhere near long enough to make a chapter, even stringing all three together, its really short. But that covers the end of the third dungeon and their martial arts instruction. They __**finally**__ remembered to go see Fiona, and now it's on to more training!_


	167. Cheatsheet 11

—

«»

『』

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

March 8 – Wednesday Tenth Floor Clear

March 18 – Saturday Eleventh Floor Clear

March 25 – Saturday Twelfth Floor Clear

April 3 – Monday Thirteenth Floor Clear

April 13 – Thursday Fourteenth Floor Clear

April 19 – Thursday Fifteenth Floor Clear

April 26 – Thursday Sixteenth Floor Clear

April 28 – Saturday – Current Day

exp 2046800

col 812360

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

One-handed Sword 481

Sp: 2324367

Sprint 500

Sp: 2509000

Battle Healing 430

Sp: 1857000

Acrobatics 18

Sp: 3666

Dagger 474

Sp: 2254822

Metal Working 243

Sp: 595500

Metal Refining 256

Sp: 660000

Tailoring 225

Sp: 512520

Cloth Refining 146

Sp: 216000

Hiding 1

Sp: 0

Martial Arts 391

Sp: 153913

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

# E Note

Nagajuban 2 2 Goes under kimono – silver

Twilight Kimono 2 2 Purple at top, fades to pink at bottom – high defensive stats

Aurora Obi 2 2 Blue with aurora and star patterns – high defensive stats

Hashi(Ties) 4 4 Keep the kimono on and in place – white

Obiage 2 2 Scarf-like decoration for obi – silver

Obijime 2 2 String decoration for obi – white

Ashine 2 2 10S10D - Dark gray

Fell Drive 2 2 10S10D - Red handle, silver guard and blade - long and thin

Iron Sword 2 0 different low level iron swords

Yukata 2 0 light yellow yukata

Towel 2 0 regular towel

A bunch of rare mats xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was- no charge left

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

Red Orb 1 0 Red orb from floor 1- first orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Yellow Orb 1 0 Yellow orb from floor 2- second orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Green Orb 1 0 Green orb from floor 3- third to unlock Ferin's cave

blessed twins shard of power I 122

Current Friend List:

Argo

Asuna

Haru

Lizbeth

Thinker

Vale

Level chart

30 120000 1740000-1860000

31 1 125000 1860000-1985000

32= 2 131000 1985000-2116000

33 3 138000 216000-2254000

34 5 147000 2254000-2401000

35 8 159000 2401000-2560000

36 13 176000 2560000-2736000

37 21 201000 2736000-2937000

38 34 239000 2937000-3176000

39 55 298000 3176000-3474000

40 89 391000 3474000-3865000

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

Sliding Dash – charge type – fast slide forward ~5 meters – thrust attack

Blitz – short range, high power downward slash from the shoulder

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

Rebound – defensive skill – 3hit- upward slant, horizontal, downward slant – very fast w/ short delay

Town Names to Remember:

Starting City – 1 hub

Horunka – 1

Tolbana – 1 frontline

Urbus – 2 hub

Serof – 3 hub

Reu – 5 hub

Pala – 6 hub

Regg – 6 frontline

Shaen – 6

Finreo – 7 hub

Maren – 7

Friben – 8 hub

Cetiose – 10 hub

Sythum – 10 frontline

Taft – 11 hub

Barta – 12 hub

Higata – 14 hub

Shrra – 14 frontline

Onizumi – 14

Ruin – 15 hub (Not actually a town)

-Special Equipment Forged-

«Veiled Wayfinder» – Rei&Rai – 3rd floor – In use

«Harmonious Convoy – Rei& Rai – 3rd floor – Destroyed

«Sunbeam» – Asuna – 6th floor – ?

«Mark of Bravery» – Vale – 7th floor – not in use

«Twilight Kimono» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

«Aurora Obi» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

«Ashine» – Rei&Rai – 14th floor – in use

«Fell Drive» – Rei&Rai – 14th floor – in use

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four is in the deepest pit of the darkest cavern. You must travel to the land of Earth. Through the Southern mountains, descend into the endless ravine. You must continue to fall, all the way to the bottom. Only there will you find 『The Master of Earth』. Defeat it to claim the second orb. But beware, descending into the caverns is the easy part. They will fight to keep what they have claimed.』

-3-

『Amidst the soft firs and hard oaks of the misty forest, there lies a forbidden grove. In the far southern reaches, it stands apart from all around it. Within the grove, trespass on its inhabitants to rouse their master, the 『The Colossus』. If you can defeat him, he will yield the orb for which you search. Beware however, for a Colossus will not be stopped by death alone.』

-4-

?


	168. Chapter 156

**Tower Towns**** Chapter 156**

It was a couple days later the first day of May, and we were sitting atop a balcony overhanging the street on the seventeenth floor's bustling main town, «Atkala». Apparently, the clearing group had cleared the sixteenth floor during the second half or our martial arts training, opening up this one. It was the smallest floor yet, since most of it was covered in large lakes and rivers. Despite that, it was taking some time to clear due to the tough mobs residing here.

Well, it wasn't that the mobs were that much harder than those previously, the problem was that the experience they provided hadn't caught up to the vastly increasing level curve. Everyone's levels were stagnating as it was becoming ever more difficult to level up with such small amounts of experience given.

For us, we hadn't been grinding for some time now. As such, we were still only level thirty-two, about four, maybe five levels behind most frontliners. Of course, we weren't falling much farther behind, since none of them could really level up very well anymore. To make up for our levels, we'd increased our combat stats drastically, in a very short period of time.

Currently, at this very moment in fact, we were sitting on a balcony, overlooking the busy crowd below. Meanwhile, our «Hiding» skill was gaining SP and leveling up continuously. Since we had completed the third dungeon, obtaining all but the last orb to unlock the cave where we would finally recover Ferin's memories, we had moved back to training our Skills, the next one being «Hiding». After some thought, and rereading the information on how to level it up a number of times, we had figured out a method for leveling up the Skill as fast as possible.

Since its description read, 『Levels up by successfully hiding, with Skill Points gained depending on the levels of ones it is used against.』 we'd figured the best way to level it up would be to hide from a whole lot of people, all at once. That way, we would gain tons of SP really fast. However, the second part made it a bit difficult to just do that, since it said, 『Once the Hiding fails and someone notices you, no more SP will be gained from attempting to hide.』

So if even one person saw us, we'd stop gaining points. We would have to move somewhere else and try again. Just standing in the street and trying to hide (which was actually done by simply thinking that you wanted to hide) would not be effective since we would be seen immediately and gain no points toward the skill.

Fortunately for us, the limited ground space worked to our advantage here. Instead of spreading out, everything was built upward. To avoid being discovered quickly, we had come to the most busy city, and now sat high above the crowd, within view, but it was surprising just how little people actually looked up. In the side of my vision, a small figure detailing my general chance of successfully going unnoticed if someone looked this way indicated that it was completely nonexistent. It wasn't surprising really. We didn't blend in, it wasn't dark, there was nothing to keep anyone from seeing us, and our «Hiding» skill really wasn't very high yet. That's why positioning was so important.

A few more minutes passed this way, before some person among the crowd apparently glanced up and noticed us sitting there. A flash of red around the edges of my vision alerted me that we'd been discovered.

No longer trying to hide, the «Hiding» interface disappeared from my view, as we both rose to our feet and hopped to an adjacent balcony. From there, we hopped up onto a nearby rooftop and walked a short distance until we came upon a new place to sit and continue to hide. We continued this pattern of hiding and moving, hiding and moving, for the next few hours, until the early morning chaos died down and everyone moved out for their daily hunts, quests, and dungeon clearing.

With the city population reduced to a handful of people and a bunch of NPCs, we dropped back to ground level. Since we could only train «Hiding» efficiently for a few hours each day, we'd spent the rest of the time working on «Acrobatics», which was a lot more simple. Apart from using System Assisted movements (which I think included cartwheels and other sorts of tumbling moves) it leveled up based on three factors. Time spent in the air, horizontal distance, and vertical distance.

That's to say, each time we jumped, the skill would gain points simply by multiplying the three numbers together. Since they all multiplied together for each jump, it was much more effective to make one big jump than a whole lot of small ones. For this, we moved on to the seventeenth floor's frontline town «Kaelum». Given the way towns on this floor were build upward, in the middle of the city was a tower, stretching about halfway to the next floor above. It contained many balconies, which we gladly used to jump from.

Obviously a fifty meter drop was suicidal under normal circumstances, but we couldn't be hurt no matter what within the city bounds, so that wasn't a problem. What did present a problem was what it would actually feel like, falling more than sixteen stories. Fortunately for our legs, «Acrobatics» made our landings much lighter, with the effect increasing considerably once we started to level it up some.

That brought us to the huge tower, where we would repeatedly jump off each day. Though it was on the second day that Onee-chan came up with a good idea to make each jump count even more. By jumping together, one of us could give the other a boost, increasing the distance they could travel considerably, while the other would land back on a lower balcony of the tower, to make a normal jump themselves. It wasn't particularly exciting, and climbing all the way to the top of the tower over and over was exhausting, but it was the most efficient method we could come up with.

Going between the two methods of training, we had passed the last two days, and again today. «Hiding» was increasing steadily, but «Acrobatics»... I brought up my skill menu after landing the last jump for the day. "Level five hundred eight," I giggled. There's no way they expected people to train the skill this way, was there? At our current pace, we could have the skill mastered within a week. However, we had more important things to do than waste time raising a single skill that high.

Meeting Onee-chan again, took a short break to eat some more of the tasteless bread before heading toward the town gates. Though this was the frontline town, it didn't have a «Teleport Crystal» like «Atkala». Because of that, the crowd was a bit thinner here.

I released a short sigh after gulping down the bread. "Sorry," Onee-chan apologized for the food as she passed me a metal flask containing water. I knew she didn't like it any better than I did, but we weren't doing anything to make money currently. We had a good bit of Col still, but we didn't want to squander it. So we were running on plain 1 Col bread from the first floor and a cheap room on the second. Once we got back into action, surely we would be able to increase our living expenses a bit.

"Well, now that we're done training «Acrobatics», what do we do next?" I quickly changed the subject.

Onee-chan let out a short sigh at my hastily asked question, and I realized I'd just put us into even worse territory. "Well, it should mark when we're strong enough to return to Ferin's quest, but..." She didn't even have to finish. Even with all this, we were clearly too weak to go on right now. Even more than that, how could we ever move on if the next boss had a final attack like the last one? An unblockable, unavoidable, instant-kill attack...

I lowered my head, sighing as well. "Isn't there anything we can do? We've made it through everything, survivable or not, up until this point..." We both sat there, thinking for a minute, but nothing was coming to mind.

"Hey, Onee-chans, what's wrong?" Hearing a familiar voice, we both looked up. It was certainly not someone I'd expected to see any time soon.

"Haru-san?"

_Author Note: Believe it or not, I actually had to tone down how fast they leveled Acrobatics. Going by straight physics, they would have gotten it to level 898 in that time with their nutzo training method. Haha._


	169. Chapter 157

**Unexpected Advice?**** Chapter 157**

Haru stood in front of us, the same big, toothy smile he'd always worn the first time we met him stretched across his face. When we didn't answer, he repeated the question. "You look sad, what's wrong?"

"Just trouble with a quest," Onee-chan sighed, as if to brush off the question.

A look passed over Haru's face, as if he was thinking about something, before he grinned again. "Maybe I can help?" he suddenly volunteered.

"Nonononono!" Our single response came instantly, followed by Onee-chan explaining, "it's way too dangerous."

"Aww," Haru complained, then, "well then, what's the problem?"

"It's just that the Bosses are too strong, and their final attacks are too dangerous."

"Bosses?"

"Ah, that's right," I thought aloud, "the quest has us doing a bunch of dungeon raids, with Bosses at the end."

"So it's a campaign quest?" he exclaimed, eyes sparkling.

"Yeah, pretty much..." I giggled, to cover the thought that I didn't know if I could really call this a 'quest' at all.

"That sounds really cool..." he murmured. "So the Bosses are too hard? What makes them hard?" he asked intelligently. I blinked a couple times hearing the question coming from the small child. That's right, despite his appearance, he really wasn't all that weak himself. He'd managed to get to this city all the way on the frontlines after all.

"Well..." I started, but realized I hadn't actually thought about his question. Onee-chan had though. I picked up her train of thought, saying, "Overall, they are quite strong on their own, but each of them has had some especially dangerous special abilities. One had an attack which caused heavy damage to equipment, another could split itself into multiple monsters, and one could..." I stopped for a moment, unsure of how to describe that last one's special ability.

"It couldn't be hurt by attacking it anywhere except for specific spots, and it was _huge,_" she stretched her arms all the way out trying to express it, even though there was no way to make anyone understand how big the Colossus was without them seeing it for themselves.

"But overall, we haven't met anything that we just couldn't beat. The biggest problem is that when their hp drops to zero, the Bosses all fall over and kind of 'play dead' until we go to leave. Then they jump up and attack us again."

"Do they get a whole lot stronger or something?" Haru cut in, his head tilted to the side a bit.

I shook my head. "It's not really like that. When they get back up, they're invincible and we can't kill them, so we have to run away," Onee-chan explained.

"Then how do you beat the quest?" he blinked a few times.

"Ah that's right, by then we've collected the jewel the Boss drops when it falls. That's the only thing we need, so it's not a problem," I said, covering the detail we'd missed. Haru nodded a couple times before I went on. "The problem is how dangerous they become when they get back up. The first one wasn't all that bad actually, but the second nearly killed us. The third..." I gulped. "It would have killed us if hadn't been another person there to die in our place." Haru stared for a few seconds, lips moving slightly, but not forming any words.

"When it comes down to it, we got lucky. It seems like that attack it used only targeted one person. If the next Boss uses something like that, but it can target multiple people, I don't think there's any way we could possibly survive it. It might even use some attack that's even worse."

"Ahh..." Haru mumbled. By now, his smile had been replaced with a small frown as he rubbed his chin, thinking. "Do you know what kind of monster the next Boss will be?" We both shook our heads slowly. "Do you know where to find it?"

"Well..." given the pattern so far, the fourth floor probably, though that wasn't enough to go on. We'd need to go and read the last riddle to find it. "There are some riddles on the fifth floor that reveal the locations of the Bosses. We would need to go there to find out.

A big grin crossed Haru's face, "Let's do that then. The best way to make a tough battle easier is to run a scouting battle, right?"

We both sat there for a few seconds, rendered speechless by his unexpected idea. While a scouting battle wouldn't help us against its final attack, just knowing what we were up against beforehand could make things a lot easier...

"Sure, let's give it a shot," I grinned.

Leaving our spot in the town square, we left «Kaelum» and headed back to «Atkala» so we could warp down to the fifth floor. After we'd recovered from the shock of moving from a wetlands floor to the middle of a desert, we set off, making good time across the sands to arrive at the single cave, seemingly placed in the absolute center of nowhere, as always.

Moving around the side, we came to the little stone platform once more. We cleared away the sand covering it, and I immediately noticed that the inscription was a lot shorter than the rest. Together, we read it aloud while Haru copied it down on a small notepad.

"『Within the Iron Straight, In the Valor Court, 『Morgram』 awaits, to end your journey. 』" That was it. We stayed knelt down for a few moments, rereading the text a few more times to be sure that we had actually read that right.

Then Haru commented. "That... doesn't sound good..."


	170. Chapter 158

**Scouting**** Chapter 158**

_Author Note: Ok, getting back into it!_

We were on our way back to town, after walking most of the way without a word, when Onee-chan finally broke the silence. "If our guess is right, this Boss should be somewhere on the fourth floor, but we don't really know that floor very well..."

"That's right," I chimed in, "we've only ever gone there a couple times, and it usually wasn't for anything more than to check the shops for some items we were looking for." From what little I could remember of it, the floor was a mountainous one, but unlike the second, everything was covered in lush grass, even within town.

"Really?" Haru blinked with a surprised look.

"Since we don't know the floor well, do you know where the riddle might be referring to?"

After a short pause, Haru responded, "Actually, the Iron Straight and Valor Court are two actual locations on the floor." Now it was our turn to look back in surprise.

"Wait, you mean actual named places?" we both asked.

"Yeah, here." Manipulating his menu quickly, Haru produced the floor map for that floor and turned to show us. "Over here," indicating to a section in the northwest area of the floor, "there's a shallow valley called the Iron Straight." His finger traced back and forth a few times to show the length of the ravine.

"Right here, before the edge of the floor, is the Valor Court. It's a big gray building, kind of like a castle I guess. There are a one or two quests in this town," finger tapping on a small dot nearby, its name reading «Iise», "which bring players into the area, but I've never gone into the Valor Court myself. It's a pretty isolated area actually," he noted.

"Well, that makes things easier... Still, isn't it kind of ominous? It gave an actual location this time," I thought aloud. "Actually, hasn't that been happening more and more? Every dungeon we've gone into has been getting shorter and shorter." Onee-chan nodded, having come to the same conclusion.

It wasn't much longer before we arrived back in the sand-covered «Reu» and made our way toward the center of town. "What was the name of main city again?" Onee-chan asked as we entered the square, not wanting to open her map to check.

"«Shiribusa»," Haru answered easily. We all walked up to the «Teleport Gate» in the middle of the deserted town and called out the teleport command, blue light enveloping us. A moment later, we stood in an unfamiliar place. All around, grass so green it hardly seemed real, spread across the ground. Unlike most every other town, this one had little in the way of roads, some faint tiling all that marked the four main roads, which were, like every other town, aligned with the four cardinal directions. Everywhere else was simply grass.

Glancing to the sides, I noticed that the «Teleport Gate» here was quite unlike most. The others almost always contained some structure, vaguely reminiscent of a gate, constructed in a manner following the floor's theme. Here, the gate not only didn't follow the floor's theme, but there was no actual, physical object to begin with. Instead, the gate was marked out on the ground in white. It seemed to be drawn on the ground like the lines of a sports field, in white chalk, though I felt pretty sure it would never wipe away or come off like those did.

The white chalk-like lines detailed a very specific, intricate design. Just like the ones seen in any Magical Girl show anyone had ever seen, it was a magic circle. How odd, to use a symbol like that in a world without magic- No, that wasn't really right. I'd seen plenty of magic myself. The key point was that none of _us_ could use magic.

Then, given that all «Teleport Gates» were inherently magical objects, I guess it wasn't so surprising for one of them to be portrayed as a magic circle. While I worked my way to this conclusion, we were following Haru through numerous rows of buildings. The fourth floor really was an odd one, wasn't it? The buildings were in a western style, like they were on all the floors, the fourteenth being the only exception. However, instead of a wooden construction, they were more in line with the stone buildings on the second floor, only smoother, closer to a marble appearance than the rough cut red-brown stone on the lower floor.

Proceeding quickly out of the city, we crossed the grassy, hilly expanse of the floor that lead to the Northeast. It was pretty late in the day now, we probably weren't going to get a chance to train our «Hiding» skill while the city was bustling with people, as usual, but that wasn't really an issue, we would get it trained up eventually. Figuring out how to fight this next boss and survive was a much bigger problem.

As we walked, the hills steadily grew in height, until the ground finally sloped down slowly. I glimpsed the city Haru had pointed out earlier, «Iise» a long way off to our left, between two passing hills, then it was out of sight again. As the path lead us lower, I couldn't help but have flashbacks around descending into the deathtrap that was the ravine on the second floor. Thankfully, the hills to our sides were spaced wide apart on either side of the path, rising at angles far too shallow to crush us between them.

Besides, whatever was trying to kill us, it didn't seem to be using the same trick twice.

As we continued on, the ever-present grass, lush and green, dwindled bit by bit. "This is the only place on this floor where the grass grows this way," Haru explained as we looked down. The grass didn't all die off like it did in other places, instead it shortened, becoming just a bit more like the scrub on the second floor. From there, the color drained from the small blades until they were a flat gray, with only a hint of green remaining at the tip.

"Here we are, this is the Iron Straight. It's named for the metal color the grass... Well, that's what the town NPCs in «Iise» say anyway," Haru quickly added. As he said, the grass looked almost metallic, though it didn't really have the right sheen like actual metal.

—Leave it to a blacksmith to notice that, Onee-chan snickered through our bond. I gave her a casual shrug, shooting back that she was the blacksmith, not me, before returning my gaze to our surroundings. While the central path continued its faint downward path, a single large hill rose a couple meters above on either side. The slope was more steep than before, but still nothing to worry about.

"At the end of this area, right near the edge of the world, there's the Valor Court," Haru explained, though it was completely unnecessary at this point. With a straight-shot to the building and nothing blocking my view, I could already make out the place far in the distance. Well, to be fair, there's no way a normal person would be able to see it at this distance yet.

Progressing farther, a few small mobs moved into our path. We paid them little mind, slaughtering them without much care as we passed. At that point, Haru chuckled. "You know, these are most powerful elite mobs on this floor. They seemed a whole lot stronger back then..."

Well sure, that made perfect sense. Back on the fourth floor, not only was everyone still learning and getting used to fighting in this world, but in terms of pure combat statistics, we were still within the range of normal humans in terms of speed and strength. Now, it was a lot different, we were all far beyond what would be considered possible for a human being. How else were we supposed to survive here?

By the time we neared the gray building, it had been dyed orange by the low hanging, setting sun. The light was still plenty to see by. Given the lack of direct sunlight for all but a few hours each day, Aincrad's inherently powerful ambient lighting allowed us all to see fairly well, even at night.

However, it wasn't quite dark yet, only about half past five. True night shouldn't fall for another half hour or so. Since we were only here for a short scouting battle, we would already be finished and on our way back by then.

A short distance from the sunstained building, I examined it more closely. Haru's description 'kind of like a castle' wasn't even close. The building was vastly more relatable to a temple, no a monastery actually. I vaguely recalled a picture I'd seen in a history textbook at some point. Flat topped roof all around, very squared walls, with numerous small windows to allow light into all the rooms. An old fashioned European monastery. If my guess was right, it would have a courtyard in the middle. That's where the Boss would be waiting.

We proceeded right up to the front gate. Here, we simply pushed the massive doors aside. "Haru-san, stay back, if anything goes wrong, teleport to safety," Onee-chan instructed, waiting for Haru to draw out a teleport crystal, holding it in a tight grip while we walked inside.

—We haven't run into a barrier.

—I noticed.

—What do you think it means? I thought nervously. If there wasn't a barrier around this place, did that mean it was possible for random people to come in? Everywhere else we had gone had been massively out of the way, such that it would be nearly impossible to stumble across accidentally. What about this area, where the most powerful of all these Bosses should reside?

Carefully advancing to the center of the courtyard, we looked in every direction. Was this the wrong place? Did the description just happen to match the names of real places? No, that would be way too much of a coincidence.

That's when Onee-chan had an idea. Pulling the last orb from our inventory, she held it straight out in front of her while looking around. She was trying to see if the orb responded to the particular barrier it was supposed to break.

After a few seconds without any positive results, she tried placing the little crystal in the hilt of her sword to amplify the power. Swinging a Sword Skill experimentally, it seemed to do the trick. Just like with the Navigation Crystal we had used before, the green light effect of the Sword Skill slowly twisted and bent, flowing down toward the ground a short distance to our right.

Looking past the light as it disappeared, we found a little stone circle on the ground, no more than a tiny detail in the construction of this large monastery. Placing my hand on the stone, I could clearly sense that it was a magical object. There was a small indentation, about the size of my thumb. I knew automatically that it was exactly the right size to hold the orb.

After briefly making sure we were ready and nodding to each other, Onee-chan pressed the little green orb into the stone. After a short delay, I felt it. Then, I saw it. All around us, green light erupted from the stone. It grew so bright I was forced to shut my eyes against the glare.

When I opened them again a few moments later, the green glow had dimmed. In a flash, the glow disappeared, replaced by a single string of green light. It flew a short distance away, suddenly circling one spot and spreading to cover the position in light.

One final flash, and the light was gone. In its place stood an armored man. Dressed in the heaviest full plate I'd ever seen, I couldn't tell if it even was a man, except that he was huge, probably a full two meters(6.5ft) tall, with broad shoulders, further accented by the round, spiked pauldrons that looked so heavy, I wouldn't even be able to hold them. Colored in a dark, dark blue with a just slight tint of purple, the nearly black armor was polished to a flawless shine, I could actually see myself reflected in a few places across its surface.

Atop this mountain of metal, the man's helmet was angled outward, like an old fashioned european knight, not allowing even a speck of skin to show underneath. In fact, I couldn't even tell if there was a person in there in the first place! For some unknown reason, he was unarmed.

After the moment it took us to look over all that, the knight moved for the first time. Slowly dropping to a knee, he pressed his palm against the ground for a moment, looking down as if in prayer or something. Then, that dark helmet snapped up to look at us.

Lifting its hand swiftly, a bright light rose from the ground. The light extended as it stood, releasing with a flash, to reveal a long lance, overly shiny like his armor, in a slightly lighter blue. It wasn't shaped like a normal lance though, it was more like the way they would design one in anime, with the top stretching far to either side before coming to a tip.

With his hand resting atop the lance, a red cursor finally appeared over the enemy's head, marking that he was no longer invulnerable to attack. At his side appeared the name I'd been expecting, 『Morgram』, atop five bars of health.

Reaching for my weapons, a sudden, dangerous feeling filled the air, and slid my feet outward to take a wider stance, without even lifting them from the ground. In the next instant, 『Morgram』 launched toward us, as if blown by an explosion or something. I could barely read the movement of his wrist holding the lance, in time to predict his attack.

Releasing the force in my feet, gravity quickly pulled me downward, the boss striking out with a high horizontal slash, aimed directly where our heads had been. He was still off the ground, a brief period of time before he would recover from the sudden charging attack. In that time, I spun, lifting my left foot at the same time Onee-chan copied the movement with her right.

It was the Martial Arts skill «Banish Kick», an attack where you kicked upward from a crouched position, most useful in a situation like this, after ducking a charge attack. Bracing both my hands firmly against the courtyard's smooth tile floor, I thrust my leg out, into the gut of the armor, nearly overhead.

However, instead of a satisfying impact against heavy steel plate, my foot hit... something else. Looking up, a flash of blue appeared between my foot and the armor, stopping my attack. It was almost like the anti-criminal code, but different. There was no system message or anything, the strange force field simply stopped our attacks.

Paying no mind, 『Morgram』 whirled the lance around over his head and we threw ourselves to either side before the deadly tip came crashing down between us. Flipping back to my feet, I drew my dagger, charging with a «Reaver» to slash across his back before he recovered.

Again, my attack met the blue force field, simply sliding past the Boss. I spun back, drawing my sword as well. Time to see how durable that shield was. Dashing forward, I caught its movement and danced to the side, around a heavy thrust, and let loose with my heaviest hitting Sword Skills. Somehow, the shield didn't budge. We both backed off quickly as 『Morgram』 recovered from the Delay, speaking in hushed tones.

"That shield is made of magic," I relayed what I'd noticed while attacking it.

"How are we supposed to break it?" I shook my head. It might require some particular item, something special made just for this quest, but I doubted it. In my mind, the eery description repeated itself. 『Morgram』 awaits, to end your journey...

"You don't think he's invincible, do you?" I asked, dodging backward repeatedly as the Boss charged forward, swinging his lance like a really long club, then counting with a «Linear» aimed directly at the weak point where his armor met his helmet, only for my attack to be nullified again.

I winced, realizing I hadn't left enough room to dodge. I caught the upward diagonal slash with my sword, crossing it over my hastily redirected dagger, but was blown away nonetheless. After skipping off the ground once, I plowed into a wall, but shook it off quickly enough. A glance showed I'd taken nearly four thousand five hundred damage, reducing me nearly to the red zone. As expected, this guy wouldn't be a pushover, even without that shield.

"We're backing off now!" Onee-chan called from where she was standing, dodging parrying a number of blows while I made my way back to where Haru was standing, hidden behind the entryway, peeking into the courtyard. Once Onee-chan dashed out of the monastery herself, 『Morgram』 stopped, standing in place for a few moments.

Then, the dark knight swung his lance with a flourish. Releasing it, the weapon dissolved into light, small particles floating away while the knight himself was enveloped in a green glow and sank once more into the ground.

When the lights finally faded, we all released a collective sigh. I was glad we'd tried the scouting battle, trying to figure out a way around that magic shield wasn't the kind of thing we wanted to be doing in the middle of a fight. Especially against an enemy we weren't even strong enough to fight yet.

This was going to take some thinking...


	171. Chapter 159

**Facepalm**** Chapter 159**

After returning to town, there wasn't much of a conversation before we went our separate ways. It's not like Haru would have any idea how to punch through a magical barrier, which was the main problem here. Sure, we weren't strong enough to fight 『Morgram』 straight out, but I'd been expecting that much. It would take a while to train and level up enough to reach that point, but at least we knew it was actually possible.

But we had to get past that shield before we could even attempt to fight him. No number of levels would help if we couldn't actually attack him. Sitting back in our cheap inn room on the second floor, we stared at the ceiling for a little while, each trying to think up some idea for how we might break the shield. You'd think after all the magic we'd dealt with, we would at least be able to come up with a single idea. Yet, there we sat, completely stumped.

"Think there's anyone else who knows?" I asked in a low voice. Onee-chan didn't even have to voice her answer. Who would possibly know how to break a magic shield? We were pretty sure we'd attracted more weirdness than anyone else, so it would make sense that we should be the experts on this kind of stuff. "Heh, if only," I grumbled at the thought.

The night ended without much change, both of us falling asleep unable to come up with anything. The next few days passed uneventfully, the only change being that we switched from leveling up «Acrobatics» during the middle of the day to training with our weapons, in order to master all the new Sword Skills we had unlocked while increasing our skill proficiencies. The seventeenth floor boss raid passed on May fifth, no problems whatsoever, and the frontline moved up once more.

The newly opened floor was a temperate tundra, not really sandy, but with no grass to be seen in any direction. The air was dry, the dirt a spiderweb of cracks in every direction. There were only a few shallow hills, but apart from that, there wasn't much but the random rock formations and towns to block a person's line of sight, all the way to the edges of the floor. The place was inhabited mainly by large lizards, both animal and humanoid, the latter of which carried all variety of weapons.

Due to the clear view, the dungeon entrance was discovered the same day we reached the floor. Still feeling lost without any plan for beating the last Boss, we decided to wander by the dungeon entrance for no particular reason.

There, we found quite a few people gathered around, working to solve the puzzle to unlock the entrance. Huh, puzzle solvers... I thought vaguely. Maybe someone here would have better luck figuring out a problem like ours? No, I had to doubt something like that. There wasn't any sort of logic to our enemy's power. He just had a shield we couldn't break.

As we approached the group, we drew the attention a number of heavily armed men, obviously there to guard the lower level puzzle-solvers as they worked on their task. Putting our hands up to show we weren't there to cause trouble, we plopped down on the dusty ground a short distance from where most of the men were crowded.

It really was easy to differentiate between various levels, like they had naturally separated themselves into tiers. Some members of the group were dressed in high grade armor, with powerful weapons. Obviously frontliners, levels thirty-four and up. Mixed in with them, men in thrown-together outfits of leather and metal armor. They were clearly lower-mid level, between ten and twenty. There was a little bit of gray area between the two, but for the most part everyone fell into these two groups.

In sharp contrast, all the men who stood scattered around, on guard, wore some of the highest level armor I'd seen to date. Just to be safe, they even positioned a few men between us and the low level puzzle-solvers. These guys clearly outranked us in terms of levels, possibly in equipment as well. According to their clan emblems, most of the were in the Force. Figures, I sighed inwardly. As long as the brains behind this operation worked with their usual speed, any experience these men missed standing out here, they would more than make up for by being the first ones to enter the dungeon, grabbing the first round of mobs, and all the easily found treasure and loot.

We sat there for some time, kind of just staring off and not really paying attention to what the men were working on. There were definitely better things we could be doing right now. Training, completing random quests, even just grinding would be better than this.

But we had to be missing something. Even if there wasn't supposed to be any way to pass that quest, we'd always managed to get through before. There had to be some sort of scheme, some loophole we could exploit... But what? How could we counter magic without knowing anything about it? If only we could use magic.. Hell, if only we knew someone who could, that would be more than enough for me!

I blinked. Then I blinked again. Know someone who can use magic? Bringing my hand up, I smacked myself in the forehead. God was I dense! Standing once more, I gave Onee-chan a hand up. She already knew what I'd realized, and we rushed off, back toward town.


	172. Chapter 160

**Magic**** Chapter 160**

As soon as we made it back to «Mekrino», the eighteenth floor's large hub city which was situated all the way on the eastern edge of the floor, we warped all the way back down to the fifth. The main town, «Reu», was totally empty since no one liked the scorching hot desert. This area would afford us the privacy we needed.

Already panting from the stupid heat, we walked into an NPC restaurant to at least get out of the burning hot morning sun. "Ok, I already regret coming here," I grumbled as we sat down.

With no one around, we drew Ferin from our inventory and Onee-chan held the little gem aloft momentarily before awkwardly unsheathing her sword in the confined space. She inserted the crystal into the slot in the back of the hilt and the weapon abruptly came glowing to life.

Across the table, I rested my palm on the handle so I would also be able to hear Ferin's thoughts. Getting right to it, Onee-chan asked, "We need to break a magical shield, do you know how?"

— Use magic to pierce or dispel it.

After the thought inserted itself into my mind, I said, "We can't use magic, is there any other way?"

— None.

"Is there anyone who might be able to break the shield for us?" Onee-chan asked, searching for any lead we could run with.

— My mother.

"Seriously?!" we both exclaimed together.

— Yes, she answered, apparently not realizing question was only rhetorical.

Without delay, we set out again, teleporting up to the seventh floor, realizing too late that we were transferring between desert and ice floors again. Still, I'd take freezing cold over burning heat any day. After taking a few minutes to recover from the temperature shock, we headed for «Maren», the little outskirt town where Fiona lived. It didn't take long to get there, arriving outside her small house and letting ourselves inside. It wasn't like she would come if we knocked... or would she?

Briefly wondering about that while we made a few turns to reach the little kitchen in the middle of the house, I then shrugged it off as unimportant. As always, Fiona sat at the table. We both gave a quick greeting, "Good morning Fiona-san," and she responded in kind.

While we took seats across the table from her, she politely asked why we had come today. "Right now, we're stuck. The next enemy we have to fight to recover Ferin-san's memories has a magical shield that we can't break on our own. According to Ferin-san, we need to break the shield with magic, but we can't use any. She said you could do it," Onee-chan explained earnestly.

Fiona nodded once before answering, "I see. Unfortunately, I do not have any more magic, and I know of nowhere I could get any." What did she mean by 'get magic'? I wondered, but she was already going on. "If you have any magic crystals I could use as a source, I certainly have the skill to dispel a shield like that."

"Would this work?" I asked, already drawing out one of the little magic shards. As soon as she saw it, the older woman gasped aloud.

"That will work perfectly! Where did you get it?"

Shrugging together, we only gave a vague, "we just found them," since they all came from broken magic, a source that wouldn't be there if we went back to check.

"Well nevermind that," she shook her head quickly. "Besides, if you have that, why are you asking me for help? You could easily dispel the shield yourselves." That one caught us off-guard.

"Huh? How?"

"That crystal is pure magic, all you have to do is hold it while you cast a spell," she stated it so simply, as if we should already know.

"But how do we cast a spell?" we both insisted together.

"I believe a demonstration is in order," Fiona sighed, stretching out her hand, wordlessly asking for us to hand her the shard. However, she then drew her hand back slightly, asking, "If I show you, it will use up that shard, this isn't your only one, is it?

"It's ok, we have enough that we can spare a couple to figure out how it works," Onee-chan explained while handing it over.

"Ok, listen closely. While you hold the shard, you can shape the magic into any form you choose. To do so, all you must do is will it to happen. The magic will respond to your intention. Starting off, you will want to speak your intention aloud. It is far too easy to have various thoughts in mind at once, keeping the magic from responding properly. When you speak, it forms one concrete thought in your mind, which the magic will easily be able to follow."

Holding her hand out, she thought for a few seconds. "To show it, I think I'll use ice," she spoke in a detached voice, as if thinking aloud. Looking back to us, she spoke a single word, slowly and calmly, "Ice." A gentle light radiated around her hand, followed by a short flash. Sitting atop her palm, there was now a small block of ice. It actually looked rather similar in shape to a Teleport Crystal, though it was ice-colored, that kind of transparent-white color of an ice cube.

Fiona handed it off so we could look at it for a few seconds while she explained. "It works just like that for anything you want to do. The magic can be formed into absolutely anything, provided that there is enough of it."

"What do you mean by that?" Onee-chan looked up.

"If you try to shape the magic into a form that it does not have enough power to take, it will simply disperse into the air. For example, if you tried to create another magical item out of a shard, it usually wouldn't work because they have higher concentrations of magic inside them. For something like that, you would need to use multiple shards."

"I see..." Onee-chan mumbled. I could feel that she was thinking back to the time we had desperately created a Teleport Crystal with the shards around us while we were falling outside Aincrad. That's right, we had done what Fiona was talking about back then. Too bad we didn't have any idea it could be used like this though. "Wait, but earlier, weren't you asking for any magical crystal? How would you be able to use them like this?"

Fiona nodded briefly and said, "I have enough experience that if I break down an item containing highly concentrated magic, I can harness some of it for a spell. I wouldn't recommend trying it, not until you have a great deal of experience yourselves. You'll waste a lot of rare and valuable items." We both nodded seriously. We weren't as filthy rich as we used to be, and blowing through Teleport Crystals trying to practice without using up our limited pool of magic shards would quickly eat all of our reserves.

Maybe Healing Crystals would be a better alternative, I wondered momentarily. We had never really used them, but they were only a fraction of the price. Though I had no idea if they had the same amount of magic in them as Teleport Crystals, it's not like there was a stat for that... Dropping the thought, I looked back to Fiona.

"Well, thank you so much for the help Fiona-san. We'll be going on our way now," Onee-chan stood up and gave a bow to the old woman, who smiled and nodded. I mimicked the gesture, then we both left the house.

Out in the empty street, we found that it had started to snow. It was cold and the white particles stung a bit wherever they touched skin, but we didn't pay it too much mind. Somehow, it felt kind of nice, the snow stinging my skin as we kicked into a run on our way out of town.

It was a bit sad though. I could be fairly sure that the human population of that town was zero. With ten thousand people trapped here at the beginning, there were only about seven thousand or so left, not that anyone could point out an exact figure. If there were, say, six thousand left by the time we reached the final floor, that would only be a mere sixty people per floor, if everyone spread out for some reason. It just felt too empty. For a castle this size, instead of ten thousand people, one hundred thousand would have been more fitting.

Though that would be no good anyway, since it turned out to be a trap. Well, that and everyone started in one place. That wouldn't have worked with ten times as many people present, would it...?

Shaking my head slightly, I moved on to the next thought that had come to mind. Now that we knew how to beat that Boss's shield, we just needed to get strong enough to beat the boss itself. There was still the mystery of what it would do after it fell, but as always, there was no way of even planning for something like that. It would come down to quick thinking and luck, which thankfully we had more than our fair share of.

For a few moments, I listened to the howl of the wind and snow crunching underfoot. I took a deep breath and smiled, new plans beginning to form as we ran. Now, what next...


	173. Cheatsheet 12

—

«»

『』

-2022-

November 6 – Sunday SAO Begins

December 6 – Tuesday First Floor Clear

December 17 – Saturday Second Floor Clear

December 28 – Wednesday Third Floor Clear

-2023-

January 7 – Saturday Fourth Floor Clear

January 17 – Tuesday Fifth Floor Clear

January 29 – Sunday Sixth Floor Clear

February 10 – Friday Seventh Floor Clear

February 21 – Tuesday Eighth Floor Clear

February 26 – Sunday Ninth Floor Clear

March 8 – Wednesday Tenth Floor Clear

March 18 – Saturday Eleventh Floor Clear

March 25 – Saturday Twelfth Floor Clear

April 3 – Monday Thirteenth Floor Clear

April 13 – Thursday Fourteenth Floor Clear

April 19 – Thursday Fifteenth Floor Clear

April 26 – Wednesday Sixteenth Floor Clear

May 5 – Friday Seventeenth Floor Clear

May 5 – Friday – Current Day

exp 2046800

col 803370

Rikito Eiji Rei

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

Rikito Keiko Rai

stat points 12

STR 34

AGI 50(+1)

HP 5732

One-handed Sword 487

Sp: 2375347

Sprint 500

Sp: 2521000

Battle Healing 430

Sp: 1857000

Acrobatics 514

Sp: 2650000

Dagger 481

Sp: 2325024

Metal Working 243

Sp: 595500

Metal Refining 256

Sp: 660000

Tailoring 225

Sp: 512520

Cloth Refining 146

Sp: 216000

Hiding 391

Sp: 1527400

Martial Arts 416

Sp: 1740230

Blessed Twins 1

Sp: 0

# E Note

Nagajuban 2 2 Goes under kimono – silver

Twilight Kimono 2 2 Purple at top, fades to pink at bottom – high defensive stats

Aurora Obi 2 2 Blue with aurora and star patterns – high defensive stats

Hashi(Ties) 4 4 Keep the kimono on and in place – white

Obiage 2 2 Scarf-like decoration for obi – silver

Obijime 2 2 String decoration for obi – white

Ashine 2 2 10S10D - Dark gray

Fell Drive 2 2 10S10D - Red handle, silver guard and blade - long and thin

Iron Sword 2 0 different low level iron swords

Yukata 2 0 light yellow yukata

Towe regular towel

A bunch of rare mats xx 0 for crafting with metal

Control Crystal 1 0 Controls Magic

Navigation Crystal 1 0 Leads to where Fiona's shack in the woods was- no charge left

Ferin 1 1 Ferin in crystal form

Red Orb 1 0 Red orb from floor 1- first orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Yellow Orb 1 0 Yellow orb from floor 2- second orb to unlock Ferin's cave

Green Orb 1 0 Green orb from floor 3- third to unlock Ferin's cave

blessed twins shard of power I 121

Current Friend List:

Argo

Asuna

Haru

Lizbeth

Thinker

Vale

Level chart

30 120000 1740000-1860000

31 1 125000 1860000-1985000

32= 2 131000 1985000-2116000

33 3 138000 216000-2254000

34 5 147000 2254000-2401000

35 8 159000 2401000-2560000

36 13 176000 2560000-2736000

37 21 201000 2736000-2937000

38 34 239000 2937000-3176000

39 55 298000 3176000-3474000

40 89 391000 3474000-3865000

HP

300 + (level - 1) x 150 + strength x 20 + agility x 2

Total Skill points for levels

def Skill(start,end):

num=1

sp=0

if(startend):

print("Bad Range")

elif(start0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end0):

print("Skills start at 1.")

elif(end1000):

print("Skills only go to 1000.")

else:

while(num=end):

sp=sp+20*num

if (num=start):

print("Level: ",num," Total SP: ",sp,)

num=num+1

List of Sword Skills So I don't have to keep going back to find them:

-One-handed Sword-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

Sonic Leap

Vertical Arc

Rage Spike

Sharpnail

-Made up-

Horizontal Arc – 2 opposite horizontals – shallow X shape

Flash Draw – charge type – can only use right after drawing sword – sheathes sword during delay

Reverser – 2 slants in opposite direction – like / or \

Whirl – strong 365 degree spin attack

Sliding Dash – charge type – fast slide forward ~5 meters – thrust attack

Blitz – short range, high power downward slash from the shoulder

-Dagger-

Horizontal

Vertical

Slant

Uppercut

-Made up-

Linear – thrust – same as rapier skill

Reaver – charge type – attacks at same time as charge – same as curved sword skill

Crescent – spinning 2 hit attack

Swift Cut – charge type 2 hit uppercut at end

Edge Thrust – horizontal then half-spin and backward stab

Double Undercut – two upward slants holding dagger backhand

Lasher – two downward slants, one powerful uppercut

Rebound – defensive skill – 3hit- upward slant, horizontal, downward slant – very fast w/ short delay

-Martial Arts-

-Pretty Much All Made Up-

Punch

Kick

Roundhouse

Banish Kick – Crouched kick upward to knock enemy away

Town Names to Remember:

Starting City – 1 hub

Horunka – 1

Tolbana – 1 frontline

Urbus – 2 hub

Serof – 3 hub

Shiribusa – 4 hub

Iise – 4

Reu – 5 hub

Pala – 6 hub

Regg – 6 frontline

Shaen – 6

Finreo – 7 hub

Maren – 7

Friben – 8 hub

Cetiose – 10 hub

Sythum – 10 frontline

Taft – 11 hub

Barta – 12 hub

Higata – 14 hub

Shrra – 14 frontline

Onizumi – 14

Ruin – 15 hub (not actually a town)

Atkala – 17 hub

Kaelum – 17 frontline

Mekrino – 18 hub

-Special Equipment Forged-

«Veiled Wayfinder» – Rei&Rai – 3rd floor – In use

«Harmonious Convoy – Rei& Rai – 3rd floor – Destroyed

«Sunbeam» – Asuna – 6th floor – ?

«Mark of Bravery» – Vale – 7th floor – not in use

«Twilight Kimono» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

«Aurora Obi» – Rei&Rai – 10th floor – in use

«Ashine» – Rei&Rai – 14th floor – in use

«Fell Drive» – Rei&Rai – 14th floor – in use

Riddles:

-1-

『The way ahead will stay forever closed, until all four orbs are collected and placed in the pedestal. The first lies within the far land, atop the great pyramid of the morning sun. To claim the orb, you must first defeat the guardians at the mouth of the canyon in order to begin the ascent. Next, take a leap of faith. Move through the river of lost souls. Then, amidst the dead, you must prevail and move on. Follow the winding stair. Give up all hope before attempting to cross the bridge of thorns. Beware the winged guardians as you make the mountainous trek. Atop the pyramid awaits 『The Harvester of Souls.』 Defeat it and claim the orb. However, you must be fleet of foot if you intend to keep it.』

-2-

『The second of the four is in the deepest pit of the darkest cavern. You must travel to the land of Earth. Through the Southern mountains, descend into the endless ravine. You must continue to fall, all the way to the bottom. Only there will you find 『The Master of Earth』. Defeat it to claim the second orb. But beware, descending into the caverns is the easy part. They will fight to keep what they have claimed.』

-3-

『Amidst the soft firs and hard oaks of the misty forest, there lies a forbidden grove. In the far southern reaches, it stands apart from all around it. Within the grove, trespass on its inhabitants to rouse their master, the 『The Colossus』. If you can defeat him, he will yield the orb for which you search. Beware however, for a Colossus will not be stopped by death alone.』

-4-

『Within the Iron Straight, In the Valor Court, 『Morgram』 awaits, to end your journey. 』


	174. Chapter 161

**Trade Capital**** Chapter 161**

_Author Note: Urgh, preparing to host a party, totally sucked into To the Stars, and __**sick**__. -_-;_

_Must. Write. Next. Chapter..._

_Ok, I'm a mess. Didn't even get started, had the party, broke my phone, had a second party, still ridiculously sick... Now there are a ton of people staying at my house and I don't know if I'll even be able to use my computer when I want to. I will not let myself read any further in To the Stars until I can get this next chapter written! I really want to at least get something down already. T-T_

With our various skills upgraded as they were, the next thing to do to make ourselves stronger was the ever-obvious 'keep levelling up!' We were already a number of levels behind the persistent frontliners, who kept grinding and grinding, even with the minimal efficiency they got from the current mobs. However, considering just how ineffective it would be, even with our extra boosts, we couldn't go with that plan.

Instead, it was time to focus on the last option: equipment. It wasn't like we could make anything significantly better than we already had though, since we had totally abandoned our crafting skills for the past couple weeks while training. First, we had to raise those skills to higher levels, only then would we be able to make better gear.

That meant that for now, we had to grab our «Vendor's Carpets», which we'd left to collect dust the last few weeks, and head out to practice.

Even though the frontline was up on the eighteenth floor, it wasn't difficult to get back to the hub city «Mekrino», since the floor was a barren expanse of nothing. Unsurprisingly, no no one liked the hot, dry desert floor. And as it was, they had easy access to the «Teleport Gate» since they went back to the hub city all the time.

With those circumstances, I wasn't really surprised when everyone just went back to «Atkala» on the next floor down. The town where we had recently been training «Hiding» remained a bustling city center, despite the frontline moving up. It almost seemed natural, now that we'd been here for more than half a year, everyone was finally beginning to settle in for the long-haul. We still had upward of eighty floors ahead of us, it was about time we set up some more long-standing businesses and towns.

«Atkala» was a nice choice for the first of such cities. It was built up, with high arched gates and tall buildings with interesting architecture, built of various light and dark stone, marble, granite and a bit of sandstone scattered around in a way that made it feel diverse, without going too far to seem like a mess of color. It would be nice if the trend caught on in any new cities we found as we progressed upward, it would make things easier than always having to figure out where the shops were every week or so when we cleared another floor.

Besides that, it would give people a chance to set up permanent shops without the chance of losing all their business, since no one would visit the floor anymore.

However things would work out, we could only guess for the moment, as we plod our way through the packed city streets. Ok, maybe this town was a just a _little_ bit small to be our main trade city... Moving upward, it wasn't much better. Now that we'd been there for a little while, it seemed that a lot of people had figured out the various rooftop routes around the city. Besides that, there were so many merchants that everyone who couldn't fit on ground level anymore had set up along the edges of low rising flat- and even a few slanted- rooftops, banners hanging down to grab the attention of potential customers below.

Well, it was still better above the crowd. Even though others knew their way across the roofs now, only the ones with an AGI build would be able to traverse it well, so that cut out quite a few people right off the bat. Besides that, there were simply more shops on ground level. For anyone who didn't have a particular destination in mind, it would make no sense to travel above the shops they were trying to look at.

For the two of us, we clambered across the familiar skyways quickly, searching around for a yet-unclaimed piece of ground, roof, pillar, anything really, where we would be able to set up.

"There!" Onee-chan pointed out a spot far to our right, down near ground level. Turning my head in the middle of a jump between two buildings, I spotted the place she was pointing out, an Inn built as the corner at a hook in the road. Hitting a rough-shingled slant, I dove sideways, landing on a better roof, banked instead in the direction I wanted to go. Sliding down smoothly, I hopped off right before the end, grabbing a small horizontal flag pole hanging off an adjacent building, and swung my legs, and kicked up to onto a higher roof. From there, it was a flat path over to the inn.

Stopping on a four story tower, we hung off the side looking down while Onee-chan pointed below. "That balcony right there, we could use that as long as there's some way for people to get to it." While she explained, her finger was trained on a little overhang. It came off about the height of the second floor, but there wasn't any way into the building from there. It was most likely for simple decoration.

I grinned, it was a flat spot, that's all we needed. Leaping directly from the tower, we turned over a few times in midair, enjoying the freedom afforded by our high level «Acrobatics», before touching down feather-light on the overhang, as if we hadn't just dropped eight meters(26ft) through the air.

There, we dropped our «Vendor's Carpets», laying them over one another because there wasn't enough room for both. They hung a little bit over the front of the overhang as well, but we weren't worried about that.

Since we were above the crowd, no one would be able to see our carpets. That meant we wouldn't be able to lay out equipment for people to look at, like most shops did. Instead, we opted to follow the example of the other's who had already set up on rooftops. A bit of quick sewing and the use of some black dye, and we had a big banner which read:

『Mid-Level Swords』

『Armor and Clothing.』

We decided on mid-level gear, since our current crafting levels were pretty far behind people like that Lizbeth we met, who would be making the frontline equipment by now.

Taking our daggers, we stabbed them into the corners of the sign to keep it draped over the edge, so it wouldn't fall off. Looking at it, the cloth didn't actually pierce through. Following physics that accurately was apparently too much for the server in such a crowded area, but it didn't keep the knives from holding it properly, so it was no problem. At that point, it came down to just making stuff until some customers showed up.

And we did get customers, not a whole lot, but some, and we definitely didn't disappoint them. Since Crafting skills were slower to level up, we kept at it for some time, passing the days in various places throughout the city, though we went back to that particular overhang often, and managed to build a small customer-base. The frontline continued to move on, but as I'd suspected, people had taken a liking to this city.

Now that trade had settled in, a number of the wealthier craftsmen bought actual shops- And they _were not cheap_. I passed by a little place for sale, something I could hardly even call a shop, crushed in between a large in, and a bar, and decided on a whim to check how much it cost.

Ten million Col.

I stood there, staring at the small popup, showing that I barely had a tenth of that to my name.

And so, we passed two weeks like that to raise our crafting skills up to somewhat respectable levels again, though still probably not as good as the pure craftsmen in town. In those two weeks, the frontline managed to clear the eighteenth floor on the thirteenth, and the nineteenth floor on the twentieth.

It was no more than five hours after the twentieth opened up that the news spread like wildfire: Mob exp had finally caught up to the level curve.

_Random Facts that I figured out while I should have been writing this chapter: Leaving out the mass death craziness at the beginning, Sword Art Online had ~25% mortality rate. Given that Japan has a 0.01% mortality rate, that's a pretty scary increase from the players' previous lives.. However, it's surprisingly not nearly as bad as other (sort of) comparable situations._

_In particular, the English attempts colonization of North America. (I call these relatable because they both are based on dumping a whole lot of people into a new and dangerous environment.) The Plymouth colony actually experienced a similar 50% mortality rate, like SAO._

_In the early months of Jamestown, that rate was all the way up at 62%. But somehow, it actually got worse from there, rising to 88%. That puts the average colonial mortality rate at ~66%._

_In short: I'd rather live in Aincrad than Jamestown. -_-;_


	175. Chapter 162

**Back to the Old Grind**** Chapter 162**

_Author Note: Fixed my math fail at the end of the last chapter. Aincrad death rate was 25%, not 50%. O_O;;_

When we heard that mob exp had finally increased to a reasonable level to make it worth actually grinding, we packed up shop, readying ourselves to set out for the twentieth floor the following day.

It was early morning, the twenty-first of May, when we headed up for the first time, to the town of «Durgrin». It turned out that the floor was something new, unlike the rest so far. Almost the entire floor was a single sprawling castle, though it was so incredibly rundown and actually resembled a cave more than a castle at this point.

Many areas didn't even have torches lining the walls, requiring everyone to carry torches, lanterns, and other cumbersome light sources along with them in order to navigate the deceivingly complex web of halls and tunnels. A floor map helped somewhat, but so many different areas scrambled up, around and sideways that it was often hard to tell which section you were actually standing in. Not to mention that there was no information NPC here to sell everyone the completed map, requiring everyone to explore it like a dungeon.

In fact, it may have all been a dungeon, on a huge scale like we'd never seen before, though it remained to be seen whether we would find an actual dungeon somewhere within the castle. With a few sighs, we bought the updated map data from Argo, finding it to be sixteen percent filled in already, a very good number for the dozen or so hours the floor had been open. The frontliners were getting really good at this...

It took a moment to remind myself that I was a frontliner myself, even if it was just by command from the guild... that and we hadn't been there in nearly a month... I shook off the thought as we set out from town, beginning to scour the surroundings for mobs to farm, eyes on the map to study the known floor layout while we walked.

All throughout, there were various little town areas, built right inside the oppressive castle walls, all constructed in what appeared to be enormous rooms. Whatever their original function, this certainly wasn't it. There were already seven marked on the map, despite the low clear percentage. Maybe they had searched specifically for the towns? Though how they had gone about that, I had no idea. We passed a couple as we walked, but didn't venture into them. We had no reason to right now.

When we found a route not yet mapped out, we slipped into the narrow hallway and proceeded a little ways, only to find it dead-end. We had to turn around, continuing our search. The same thing happened a couple more times, before we finally reached a dead end where something else was waiting.

I could feel it as soon as we entered the area, a trap was about to spring. In the next moment, that was exactly what happened. Immediately, I found this this trap was much more elaborate than the ones we had triggered up to this point. Behind us, a wall materialized, rising up out of the floor in a flash. Glancing around, we found that there was no other way out.

Holes opened up in the walls, mobs pouring out in quick succession to fill the room, while we drew our weapons in response. There were a couple different types, but the crowd was composed mostly of 『Living Armors』. Sword and shield, with full plate, they were exactly what the name implied. There didn't seem to be any bodies, just animated suits of gray-green. Besides that, there were a few 『Brigands』, more lightly armored human mobs with various light weapons like daggers, and a single 『Centurian』in the back, probably some sort of sub-boss. "Well then, let's get to it." I grinned.

We quickly discovered that the 『Living Armors』 were actually really durable, though they didn't have much damage potential themselves. That was left to the more mobile 『Brigands』, who routinely darted out, aiming for vital points, then quickly retreated to avoid a counterattack. Meanwhile, the leader stood near the back, making some sort of motions with its arms, shortly after which the rest of the enemies eyes began to glow. Whatever it was doing, it was making them stronger, though it didn't last very long.

Once we'd gotten the pace down, there wasn't much to the fight. We just kept smashing the armor until the sub-boss finished whatever it was doing to make them stronger, then went on the defensive for a few seconds, until it wore off.

The 『Brigands』 were almost laughable, obviously not meant to fight an enemy that completely forwent blocking their attacks, instead choosing to stab them directly in their faces the moment they showed them.

Once all the lighter units were out of the way, we didn't even have to worry about taking damage too much, so we could really let loose on the heavier armor. Still, there were a lot of them, and it took a full ten minutes more to cut down most of them, clearing the small room. After we easily slew the final few regular mobs, only the 『Centurion』 remained, no longer waving about to power up its missing troops.

It looked about the same as the others, same plate armor and all, only instead of a murky greenish-gray color, it was a slightly rusty gold. Actually, it looked like its helmet was shaped a bit differently too, though I hadn't been paying close attention to the others to draw a comparison now that they were gone.

Ignoring that random thought, I rushed forward, sword drawn level for a «Sharpnail», a fast three-hit Sword Skill. Reaching the heavily armored sub-boss, we attacked.

…

A couple minutes later, the 『Centurion』 fell to our onslaught of attacks, the trap wall disappearing and leaving the area devoid of any sounds but our heavy breathing, and the sound of us plopping heavily to the ground to recover.

That was when the 『Result』window appeared. "Ahh, almost six thousand exp, that's not bad," I commented. It would take a little while to level up at that rate, but it wouldn't take days, weeks even, to do so.

"Come on, let's get going." Onee-chan stood, stretching, and gave me a hand up after. Time to find some more mobs.


	176. Chapter 163

**An Hour with the Furinkazan**** Chapter 163**

_Author Note: Hmm, I guess it's time for a series of time-skips until I get to the next important part of the story. That will make the next however many chapters kind of like side-story-filler, or something like that. I guess it'll be a bit like the volume 2 side stories, just without quite so much OP over 9000 Kirito._

_I'm considering doing it from some other point of view but... I don't know. Ah hell, why not? :3_

"Jeez, you're a slave driver, Asuna..." Klein complained loudly, though he was already walking off in the direction she had instructed him and his guild to clear. It was their fourth day on this floor now, the twenty-third of May, and the frontline was making good progress. The whole floor _was_ the dungeon this time, and they had it nearly ninety percent mapped out. There was still no sign of the Boss Room though, or any stairs leading to a higher level of the dungeon, but that didn't bother him, they would find it soon enough.

Moving down out of the little rundown town that provided the clearing group with a safe base of operations in the dungeon. Asuna was there, managing the various groups and coordinating their efforts and passing around the valuable map data, since Kibaou was more interested in exploring the dungeon and looking for treasure chests and loot for himself. "That greedy..." Klein grumbled to himself as he met up with his guild again just outside town, where they were fighting a few bandits while they waited.

As soon as they saw Klein approaching, the group visibly stepped up their efforts, finishing off the couple mobs just as their leader came near. "Yo," called Dynamm first, raising the scimitar still in his hand, before the rest followed with similar greetings.

It had been a pretty long day and he'd been hoping that last area they'd cleared would be the last for today, but as he'd said just a minute ago, Asuna was a slave driver and wanted them to map out one more area today, even though it was after 6:00 at night, when all the mobs grew stronger.

Of course, that hardly made any sense- that sort of mechanic was used in games where the mobs were all evil creatures, which wasn't the case in SAO. But who was he to argue? It's not like that bastard Kayaba cared about something as minor as sensible game mechanics when he was out to kill ten thousand people...

Checking his thoughts, Klein turned his attention to Issin. "So, where to this time, Leader?" he asked while hanging his weapon over his shoulder. Klein had never been able to figure out just what real life weapon, if any, it was based on. It had two prongs, bent outward so they looked like the English letter 'U', sharpened all the way around. What sort of merits a shape like that provided, he also had no idea. The closest he'd ever seen was a chinese monk spade, from a really old kung-fu movie he'd watched. That wasn't it either, since the shape wasn't right, and it didn't have a small blade on the opposite end of the wooden pole either.

"We're heading to the Northwest section this time," Klein explained with a wave of his hand and a sigh. His friends fell in behind him, still sheathing their weapons. Then they made their way in the direction of the section they were supposed to clear out.

…

One long hallway passed after another, only a few mobs here and there that they had to fight their way past. Given the sheer size of the dungeon, it took almost a half hour to reach the point where their map data inexplicably stopped, marking that the area had yet to be explored by anyone in the clearing group. They'd come across a few places in the past couple days that had apparently been cleared by non-clearers, but not many. Besides, if some random player came across the Boss Room door, they'd obviously have enough sense to get word to the Clearing Group, even if it required them to go through the Rat, the closest thing to instantaneous communication between people who didn't know each other... for a price of course.

Then again, she wouldn't charge to send word to the Clearers about the Boss's location... would she? No, there really was no telling with that weasly information broker. The empty halls continued, and the Furinkazan walked at an easy pace, the map filling in all around them as they walked. Klein liked the name Furinkazan, despite the initial protests from his friends, they'd grudgingly accepted the name, but quickly found themselves growing fond of the name, even if it took forever to drag it out of them.

He liked the name because it meant 'Swift as the wind, as silent as the forest, fierce as fire, immovable as the mountain.' While might not actually mean that much, it sounded cool and it was a great samurai phrase. Klein had based his build on a samurai. That's why he'd used a curved sword, raising the skill up over four hundred fifty points, until just a few weeks ago, he finally unlocked «Katana», the extra skill he'd wanted.

With his katana, he moved one step closer to his ideal samurai build. For whatever reason, Klein really liked samurais, they were just so cool, like the knights of a past age. Then again, it might just be because he read so much samurai manga, like _Rurouni Kenshin_...

'_I guess I'm just a romantic,'_ he chuckled internally, rubbing a hand over the hilt of his still-new feeling sword. Even if his skill level wasn't as high as before, it was a powerful weapon. A katana wasn't much heavier than a regular curved sword, but was still considered a two-handed weapon. Therefore, using both hands allowed for much faster and stronger attacks. Besides that, a lot of katana Sword Skills were crazy, the weapon darting in all sorts of directions that made it nearly impossible to block for anyone who hadn't memorized all the movements as well. Besides that, it worked very well for confusing mobs, opening them up to all sorts of other attacks.

Klein's eyes widened, something cutting through his reverie, though he didn't know what. Stopping short, he held up a hand, cutting short whatever joking conversation Dale and Kunimittz had been carrying on. Obviously, something important had caught Klein's attention, after all this time they would be able to see that clear as day.

Then it came again, a sound. It was so faint, he was surprised he'd heard it at all, with his friends rattling on like they had been. He recognized the sound immediately, it was a battle. "Come on!" Whoever was fighting here, they probably weren't part of the frontline, so there was no knowing if they were experienced enough to fight on this floor. Klein really didn't feel like getting there too late, only to watch some poor player die. Not today.

Following the sounds of clashing metal, the group dashed down the dark corridor. Blowing around a left hand turn, they rushed with reckless abandon, lucky there were no mobs to get the drop on them. Making a right this time, they arrived directly at the battlefield, at the point which turned out to be the very Northeast corner of the dungeon.

In the room, squared off on two walls to say that they were actually at the farthest corner, in case they hadn't checked their maps. But that's not what drew Klein's eyes. In fact, he only gave a short glance to the giant standing in the middle of the room, four arms springing from its sides. It wasn't armored, but had a dark coat of fur, thick and black, which probably reduced a good deal of incoming damage. It actually resembled a giant gorilla, somewhat.

What _did_ draw Klein's gaze, was the figure- no, figure_s_ fighting it. Two young girls in absurd outfits, two girls he knew very well. In fact... He was one of the only people who knew that one of them wasn't even an actual girl. Seeing that it was them fighting, he relaxed automatically, though he looked over the giant gorilla monster again, eyes almost popping out of his head when he read the name. 『The Heavy Grappler』. A sub-Boss?!

As he watched, the closer of the girls spun wildly out of the way, hardly in time to dodge the Boss's massive fist. She then ducked a second, dashing forward and leaping up in a way that must have required a truckload of AGI to pull off. She spun around numerous times, sword extended in some Sword Skill Klein hadn't seen before, cutting up the side of the four meter(13ft) tall beast. Ending the attack, she spun back and delivered a powerful kick which also glowed with a Sword Skill light effect.

The kick sent her into an adjacent wall, a little ways to the left of the hall entrance where the Furinkazan standing, staring at the battle listlessly. She immediately kicked off the wall, raising a dagger in her offhand and delivering a merciless «Trio», three fast stabs, into its chest. Just how many attack skills had they learned?

As soon as the attack ended, she raised her sword over her shoulder, but didn't see the monster pull up one of its arms to attack. Fist glowing with power, it struck out, the girl only noticing at the last moment. It was impressive that she managed to redirect her own attack down in time to parry, but nowhere near enough to stop something like that.

Soaring straight up, she crashed into the ceiling with a huge crash, rebounding toward the ground out of a burst of simulated rubble. She was falling with her back down, arms and legs looking limp, like a ragdoll. He remembered that those two could feel pain, due to some sort of bug with the pain inhibiting system... did that knock her out?

Klein's eyes tracked down, finding that the place she would land wasn't very far away. He didn't even have to think before he dashed over to the spot, intent on catching her so she wouldn't take any more damage.

Looking back up, he watched her shake her head, then extend her arms. In a way that made no sort of physical sense, she flipped backward, bringing her feet below her as if she could just move through the air at will. Still staring up at the girl quickly falling toward him, Klein suddenly realized that he was now staring up under her kimono, her pure white panties in full view.

He knew he should look down, but then how would he catch her? Did she even need him to catch her? Besides that, was it even Rai? If it wasn't and it was actually her brother...?! Brain overloaded, Klein was unable to decide on any course of action and stood there, arms outstretched to catch the falling girl... '_Please let it be the girl._..'

Then, the girl's legs shot downward, in a position that didn't make any sense for someone trying to land from such a high fall. Instead of spreading out her legs and crossing her arms into a defensive posture, to reduce the fall damage, she placed her feet together, one below the other. Somehow, Klein didn't process where foot was aimed.

"Guaaaahh!" A leather shoe planted itself squarely against Klein's face. Strangely, nowhere near as hard as it should have. A hit like that should have laid him out faster than he could comprehend, instead, the foot disappeared a moment later, replaced with the girl's surprised look, as she dropped upside down in front of him, rolling lightly to her feet.

"Klein-san?!" she gasped, spinning around with a whirl of blond hair.

"Yo?" Klein offered, raising a hand, unsure, for the first time, which of the two he was talking to. Probably because they were in a fight, and he'd never seen either of them in a fight before. Well, except for in those very first few days, but that didn't count, he decided. Thinking about fighting though, brought his attention back to the fact that there was a giant sub-Boss in the room, flailing flailing its four arms very angrily. Was it still fighting the other one?

Stepping to the side, Klein managed to catch sight of the other girl dodging around one attack after another, making her way in their direction. Then his own guild entered the fight, weapons brandished threateningly at 『The Heavy Grappler』 to draw the aggro off the other girl as she ran. Klein grinned, they sure caught on to the situation quick, those guys.

No longer under attack, the other twin flew across the floor so fast he hardly even saw her running. Stopping on a dime, she was already talking. "You're a life-saver Klein-san. Could you lend us a hand? This guy just doesn't want to go down."

"A,ah! Sure, you can count on us, right guys?" he shouted for everyone to hear.

"Oh!" his guildmates responded, signalling the girls to dash off again, resuming the fight.

Though it was a tad silly, wasn't it? They were already in the fight. Who could just pack up and walk away after seeing a scene like this? _Probably most players_, the gamer in him said unhelpfully. It made Klein sigh once more. '_I guess I am just a hopeless romantic..._

…

The fight stretched on for quite some time. Even with all eight of them, the thing had a ridiculous amount of defense and health. The four arms attacking all over the place didn't help the situation. But despite all that, it didn't deal as much damage as it looked like it should, probably because it was only using fists. If it had a weapon, it would be a much larger threat.

Still, in the end they managed to beat it, allowing one of the girls to land the last attack- it had originally been their prey after all, a common courtesy in the games Klein played before he got trapped here. Falling down as soon as the monster scattered into flickering blue particles of light, they all sat there, breathing heavily in the aftermath of the battle. It was really late to be fighting enemies like that, especially after a full day of clearing.

"So, what were you two doing way out here anyway? And why the hell did you decide to take on a Boss by yourselves?" he asked toward the ceiling. However, before either of them could answer, the 『Result』 screen appeared in front of all of them, marking the battle as finished. It wasn't the screen that caught his attention though, it was the loud rumbling behind him. Rolling over, Klein propped himself up on his arms to get a look at the wall, which was slowly sinking down into the floor.

Glancing around, he determined that wall to be the one making up the north corner of the castle that covered the whole floor. Did that mean there was even more room outside of that? Well, there couldn't be much, they were almost at the end of the floor as it was.

Everyone got to their feet, approaching the disappearing wall slowly, coming to stand in front of it as they waited for it to sink entirely, allowing them to see past. Unnecessarily slow, it took another twenty some seconds before the wall dropped low enough to see past.

To Klein's surprise, the ground immediately outside this dark and depressing castle were nothing but lush green grass, for the dozen or so meters it lasted before the end of the floor anyway.

Hesitatingly, they all walked out into the little field, which actually turned out to be much bigger than they were expecting. The floor was a circle after all, so the area near the middle was actually pretty spacious, it was only here, near the very corner of the castle that there wasn't much room.

Turning back around, Klein looked up and whistled. "A castle inside a castle, seems about right for that nutjob." The joke received a few chuckles, though he noted that he didn't get anything out of the girls, turning back to look at them a few moments later. "So anyway..." then realized he'd spoken before he actually thought of what he wanted to say. He was trying to start a conversation, but about what? "You... sure got better at fighting," he commented, ending his sentence decisively, as if that was actually what he'd meant to say. Standing there, feeling awkward as he looked at them, he felt like there was something else, but he couldn't think of it for some reason.

On the opposite side, the two girls were standing there, one looking all around, as if not paying attention, the other kind of looking at the ground with a weird expression. _'What a second, which one is which again?'_ Klein thought suddenly. Rei was always straightforward, looking right at him, while Rai was... well, he hadn't really noticed anything about her in particular, except that she was _not_ straightforward, looking right at him.

Right now, neither description really described either of them. One seemed to be intent on something else, while the other was clearly daydreaming or something. How was he supposed to tell them apart like this? The system was no help, it didn't even show their names. He sighed, dejectedly after a few more seconds of thinking.

"Anyway, which one of you is which again?" pointing back and forth between them as he spoke. He managed to get the attention of the one on the right, who looked down at him. The one on the left continued to stare at the ground with a weird look on her face. "Ahh..." he mumbled when they didn't offer any sort of answer for a couple seconds.

The one on the right looked at the one on the left momentarily. Did she grin a little? Klein wasn't sure if he'd really seen it or not, before she turned back to him. "Ah, sorry, I'm Rei, she's Rai," she said. _He_, Klein amended the thought. "Anyway, let's have a look around the castle, see if there's anything to find." While saying that, Rei nudged the hesitant Rai forward, so she shuffled into Klein, still looking at the ground. Then Rei threw his arm over Klein's shoulders, (as best he could anyway) and started them walking forward, so Klein scooped up Rai with his other arm.

It was a bit awkward, having the older brother on one arm and the little sister on the other. Klein didn't really know what to make of it. '_Ah, whatever, I get to hang my arm on a cute little sister...'_ Klein thought distantly as he looked up at the dull gray side of the castle. Though he couldn't really turn his head, Klein noted the sound of footsteps behind them, his guildmates were following just a short way behind the three.

For some time, they walked in silence. Klein couldn't really think of anything to talk about. Sure, there were probably a bunch of things they could catch up on, but nothing seemed to jump out to him. For whatever reason, it didn't seem like Rei or Rai wanted to say anything either. So they all just walked on, not speaking.

A minute or two later, Rei dropped his arm from Klein's back, (since that's as high as he could reach) looking up at the underside of the next floor with an expression like he was deep in thought. Rai was still staring at the ground... What was with these two today?

This silence was really starting to get to him. "So... what have you two been up to lately?" Their answers came at exactly the same time, neither even looking at him.

"Nothing much."

"Then... Talked to Asuna much lately?"

"Not really."

"...How are things going..." hadn't he already asked them that? He totally couldn't remember. "...with the Army?" he quickly changed the question.

"Fine." Klein's eyebrow twitched. These two were being weird today. Maybe if he tried something longer...?

"How about Kirito? I know he's a loner, but I haven't seen him _at all_ in like a week or two now. Any idea where he is?"

"No." Ok, now he was getting pissed. Sure, Rai was kind of weird, but at least Rei should be able to carry a normal conversation!

Opening his mouth intending to get a rise out of them, Klein said the first words that came to mind. "Hey Rei, you remember when we took that bath together? We should totally go again some time!" As expected, Rai's face dropped, blushing red, at the mention of bathing together. (Even if he was talking about her brother.) Rei though, didn't really react, so Klein added, "We can take your sister too!" fully expecting to get hit. Rei had done it a couple times back when they first met, he was very protective of his sister.

However... nothing happened. Looking over, Rei was just looking at Rai, the expression on his face strangely... determined? "Fine, I give up," Klein hung his head, "what the hell is going on and why aren't you two saying anything?"

Finally, Rei let out a sigh. "I'm sorry Klein-san, I was picking on my sister a bit, but... well, that doesn't matter." He threw a glance at Rai, who's head seemed to sink further though there's no way she could have seen the gesture while looking down like that.

"More importantly, what's that?" came from behind, Harry's voice. Drawing the three out of the previous conversation, they turned to look at him, then followed where he was pointing, to find a staircase. The stairs ascended up the outside of the castle, disappearing somewhere about halfway up to the next floor. Was it the way to the Boss Room? Even the next dungeon floor would do, as long it got the clearing group moving.

"Let's leave it for now though," Issin advised, "we should come back tomorrow with more people."

"Good point," Klein replied through yawn. "It's too late for that now, we should head back." Doing just that, the group made their way back into the dark castle, retracing their way through the empty halls and corridors until they arrived all the way back in «Hechitsu», the tiny wooden shacks grouped together that amounted to a town on this floor. It was where Asuna had been most of the day, coordinating everyone else so they could get this done as quickly as possible.

Once the two groups arrived back in town, they decided to split up and head back separately. After saying goodbye, Klein turned around. Behind his back, he could just barely hear Rei speak to Rai, asking, "Are you sure it's ok to leave it like this?" Klein waited for a long moment, hoping they didn't notice his hesitation. He didn't hear any answer, but then Rei said, "ok then..." meaning Rai must have answered 'yes' with a nod.

It seemed Rai had something she wanted to say to him, but couldn't bring herself to say it? A love confession perhaps? Klein grinned to himself. That would be amazing. If she confessed herself, everything would be great. Rei hadn't even hit him when he'd mentioned bathing with her earlier, so that probably meant he'd given his approval...

"Hello, Mister Leader, what's with the creepy face?" those words snapped Klein out of his wonderful daydream.

"Hey! Who said that?!" he demanded angrily, causing everyone to laugh at his expense.

Dropping his head, Klein grumbled, "I just want a girlfriend..."

_Author Note: I regret nothing! TxT_


	177. Chapter 164

**A Walk At Sundown**** Chapter 164**

The twenty-first floor was weird. I had thought that same thought a thousand times over since first coming to the floor about a week ago. It was the fifth of June now, and there didn't seem to be much longer before the frontline broke through here as well.

As for us, we'd been grinding hard for almost two weeks now, and had gained two levels for our efforts. Though, now that we were looking out for it, it was easy to see that our equipment was reaching the end of its usefulness. We would have to replace our weapons and armor before trying to take on 『Morgram』 anyway, this was just one more reason.

I still had to wonder what in the world we were going to do with these ridiculous kimonos once we were done with them. Perhaps they could be broken down for some materials to create our next set of armor, the same as our swords, though I wasn't sure, I'd never tried before.

That made me wonder just what our next armor would be. Another set of kimonos seemed pretty likely, but there was no telling if Onee-chan would suddenly change her mind and decide on something else entirely. At least if we decided to stick with kimonos, we knew what to do. We wouldn't have to go back through that slog of trial and error again.

But that would all come later. For now, we were walking along the slim pathway between a lake and the edge of this platform. Yes, this _platform,_ the source of my original thought. Looking off to the left as I walked, the floor which looked like nothing we'd ever been to before stretched out below thanks to our position on a particularly high platform.

Below, many landscapes were seemingly clumped exceedingly close together. However, a closer look revealed that they were actually overlapping one another at all sorts of varying elevations, each situated atop a horizontally oriented, disk-shaped platform. Where some came near each other at relatively level height, wooden bridges crossed the gap to allow people to move from one to the next. Apart from that, there were numerous towers spread all over to offer travel to platforms above or beneath each other.

Each round platform sat atop a spiraling pillar, each winding at impossible angles while shrinking down to even more impossibly thin shafts. From below, they looked almost like sunflowers, each pillar acting as the stalk to the massively huge flower atop. Between the size of the platforms and the tiny supports, there was no way something like this could exist back on Earth, not with modern materials. But that did not matter in this world whatsoever- if it was an Immortal Object, it would not break. That's all there was to it.

And so, this floor stood like some futuristic alien city, forests, lakes, towns, all spread across the elevated platforms. However, that that did not mean there was no 'floor' on this floor. Underneath the rabble of platforms, the actual ground level 'floor' was actually a single large ocean. It wasn't an instant-death ocean of lava or anything like that, it was just water, contained by an extremely thin ring of land probably no more than a couple meters thick the entire way around so that it didn't simply pour out the sides of the floating castle.

It turned out that falling from the platforms was actually quite hazardous for everyone who hadn't invested in the impact-reducing «Acrobatics» skill, which is to say pretty much everyone. For that reason, it was actually lucky that the floor below was all water. It had allowed quite a few people to fall in without taking anywhere near the fall damage of solid ground. It had probably saved more than a few lives on this strange new floor.

Which is not to say that it was entirely safe. There were all sorts of dangerous mobs in the water. If someone fell and was unlucky enough to aggro some nearby underwater mob, all they could do was flee. Weighed down with weapons and armor, while trying to swim, it just wasn't sane to try fighting them.

Anyone who fell swam to one place, the single piece of dry land offset a little ways toward the east side of the floor. It was on that little bit of ground that the twentieth floor's dungeon had let out. There, a small tower climbed up to the lowest platform. At somewhere around four hundred meters across, the platform supported «Relaghn», the floor's hub city.

From where I currently stood, I couldn't actually see the city. It was most likely hidden behind a rather large forest platform that looked... I leaned in a little and narrowed my eyes- kind of like a rocky area. It was most of the distance across the floor and even my vision had its limits. Upward of seven kilometers away, it just wasn't reasonable to expect any better, I thought with a small sigh.

Turning back, I saw Onee-chan, backlit by the low hanging evening sun, seemingly lost in thought as well. I wasn't really mad at her for what she'd done last week anymore. She honestly thought I should tell Klein that I'd decided to be a girl, she had said very earnestly that it would not be good for me to pretend around him. The other part though... maybe I was still a bit mad about that. Past her, one last platform drew up higher than the rest. The one holding the dungeon and the unusually short tower leading to the next floor.

"Oh come on, you're not still thinking about that, are you?" she asked suddenly. "Besides, if I hadn't pretended to be you, there's no way you could've avoided telling Klein-san, they way you were acting." She puffed out her cheeks, annoyed. I lowered my head and sighed.

"It's not about that," I muttered, "it's the way you just pushed me into him like you didn't care. Klein-san has a... thing... for little sisters..." I couldn't keep the blush off my face, and turned away a little, as if I could actually hide it from her.

Now it was her turn to sigh. "It's not that I don't care, or that I'm not going to protect you." She thought for a moment, I could feel that she was deciding how to phrase her next words. For just a moment, I felt a hint of playfulness as a grin flashed over her face, before it was gone and she was speaking.

"The thing is, I can tell that Klein-san is a good guy... if a bit old," she added as an afterthought, putting a finger to her cheek as if she hadn't thought about it before. Dropping the gesture, she smiled serenely for a few moments before continuing once more. "Besides, you need _experience_. I'm sure Klein-san will be... gentle."

Staring at the happy look on her face, it took a few moments to reconcile the expression with her actual words. Feeling my face grow very hot, very quickly, I sputtered, "O,O,O," took a short breath, my voice sharpening like a dagger, "**Onee-chan!**"

…

Traveling along the outer edge of a forest, we made our way quickly back toward «Relaghn» so we could transfer to a lower floor. We had been grinding again today, but night was coming and we were heading back.

The walk was quiet and more than a little awkward, but I wouldn't pay attention to that. Instead, I stared off far ahead, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. I wasn't in the mood to talk.

The rocky platform stretching out about ten meters beneath our own ended, revealing a light gray colored platform just a little farther down than that. The new area was paved and very large, overlapping the city we were aiming for, a little ways off still. Although, it didn't have an actual tower connecting it to the town, so it wasn't usually used on the way up to the dungeon.

It was however, a good way down. As long as you weren't afraid of heights. Since it hung above the city, it was considered an 『Inner Area』, which meant no fall damage. For those who wanted to get back to town quickly, it beat the normal route by nearly fifteen minutes. There weren't many towers to give access to the convenient jump point, otherwise it would have been even faster.

For us, none of that really mattered. Turning to the side, we hopped straight over the side of the platform we'd been walking on. We dropped about thirteen meters(43ft), almost the height of a four story building, and landed, already continuing on our way.

A few moments later, Onee-chan looked over, her mouth opening as she began to say something. "Hmph!" I snapped my head away angrily, cutting off whatever she'd been about to say. A few more moments passed.

"Hey!" Our heads spun back, tracking this new voice. The paved platform was empty, so we couldn't miss the big man waving at us from a little distance back. He wore heavy armor and a cloak, the way The Army did, but even compared to the commanders his were of much higher quality. It only took a few moments to recognize him.

"Vale-san!" we both waved at him. As soon as I realized I'd moved with Onee-chan though, I dropped my hand, crossing my arms and turning away again. While Onee-chan sighed, Vale jogged up to us.

"Long time no see, what's up?" He asked with a smile, which slowly waned when he saw our expressions. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Onee-chan diverted him quickly, "just a sibling thing. Anyway, what have you been up to since we've been gone?" All three of us fell into step side by side, continuing toward town.

"A lot actually. I left The Army to become a real frontliner. I usually go around with random parties, but I've actually started getting a group together lately. I'm planning on starting a guild, I just need to think of a good name," he gave us a big grin.

"That sounds great," Onee-chan commented, blinking a few times. She actually looked a bit at a loss for words.

"It probably wouldn't have worked out if not for you guys. Having that powerful sword gave me the advantage I needed to LA a lot of sub-Bosses. I even managed to get the LA bonus for the eleventh Floor Boss." Hearing something like that, I automatically thought back, trying to remember that Boss Raid. I quickly recalled that we hadn't been there for that one, but forgot the reason.

"That's really cool, did you get some really good equipment from it?"

Vale nodded quickly, "I actually got a really powerful Unique cape. It was bright blue and looked awesome. I only traded up for this one recently," he commented, lifting his forest green cape a bit when he mentioned it. That was what, ten floors? I nodded a few times, appreciatively. It must have been a great piece of equipment. Then, a thought occurred to me.

"What did you do with the cape? After you stopped using it I mean?"

Maybe he'd been expecting the question, because he answered almost immediately. "I sold it to a lower level player. Probably could've gotten more, but as long as powerful equipment like that exists, it should definitely be used." To that, we all nodded together. "On that note, what did you do with the sword you made me, after I gave it back?"

Thinking back, I remembered when he called us to the Onsen town, «Onizuma». He gave us back the sword in the main plaza, near the large group baths. Actually, that had happened at the same time we were in an Onsen with Klein.

What? I blinked a few times.

'He gave us the sword', and 'we were bathing with Klein'? I blinked a few more times. What was with that weird memory? I thought back again. I remembered both of the things happening at the same time, but my memory attributed both events to both of us. Shaking my head a bit, I thought. Who had done which thing again?

There wasn't much of a conversation between Vale and us, just a few simple greetings, some discussion of the town, and he passed off the sword.

With Klein, we dove on him, only to have Kirito show up. That's when we'd had to explain- No, that was it. It was _I_ there. _I_ had to explain to Kirito that I was a boy. My head was actually throbbing a little from thinking so hard, trying to remember that.

"Weird..." I mumbled. Then again, that day had been pretty crazy, I guess it wasn't so surprising that my memory would be kind of screwy. Hell, that was even the same day I'd decided to give in to being a girl. Not surprising at all, after a day like that.

Looking back up, I realized I'd totally missed the last conversation. Following Onee-chan's memory, I picked up what I'd missed. That's right, we'd broken down the sword and combined it with ours when we reforged them.

The conversation hit a short lull, which wasn't bad, because we were just about at the edge of the platform. Walking up to the ledge, «Relaghn» sat below, actually looking kind of small from so high up. Given how the city was about ten meters(33ft) above the floor, and we were around forty meters(131ft) up, it was a thirty meter(98) drop. Good thing we had Acrobatics, the pain would probably knock us out cold otherwise. Thank you impact reduction...

"You can go first," Onee-chan said to Vale, "We're going to jump further, you know, good for our «Acrobatics» skill.

The tall man nodded approvingly. "Always good to take advantage of a nice spot for leveling your skills," he commented, then turned back to the ledge.

A strange cry made us all stop for an instant. Then, we all turned to the right, looking up to try and track the source of the noise. Finding it, we all watched, heads tilted as a huge dragon winged slowly across the sky. In the evening light, the orange sun reflected off of what were probably shining silver scales, dyeing the beast a bright, fiery orange. The rest of the light formed a glowing halo around it as it slowly descended toward a rocky platform off in the distance. It almost looked like some kind of deity, glowing like that.

I took note of the platform's location, making a mental note to go there and kill it tomorrow, something like that would be worth a lot of experience. Should probably look around for a quest relating to it also, I thought. Flying over the town like that, tons of people must have seen it, so there was probably some kind of 'slay the dragon' quest in town somewhere.

While I was forming plans for what to do later, Vale mumbled for a few moments. "Dragon, dragon... _Divine_ dragon..." With a smile, he turned back to us, gave a short salute, and hopped off the platform, plummeting toward the city center far below.

Now that he was gone, Onee-chan turned toward me. "That's a good plan, let's get started asking around once we get back." I nodded twice before remembering I was still mad at her.

"Stop reading my mind," I huffed, though I really couldn't put much venom into the words.

Onee-chan sighed again. "Rei, I'm sorry. Earlier... that was just a joke." Face half-turned away, I eyed her with a frown.

"It wasn't totally a joke though." She couldn't deny it, not when I could read her mind too.

"Ok fine, it wasn't a complete joke. You know why? I've been the little sister before, I know how it feels to have big brother scare off all the boys who like me." She took a long breath.

Onee-chan spoke off and on, some words coming slowly, others in a big rush. "Yes, you were being protective, yes it was probably a good idea. But... isn't it also possible that I needed some of that experience? That I should have had a boyfriend when I was just a little kid, so I would have some idea what to expect once I get an actual boyfriend when I'm older?"

I'd never thought of that before. I'd just protected my little sister, like the big brother was supposed to do. It wasn't even like I'd wanted to keep boys away from her, it's just what I was _supposed to do_. My parents had said it, 'protect your little sister.' My teachers had said it, 'protect your little sister.' I think distant relatives and probably a few strangers had even said it. _'Protect your little sister.'_ That's all there was to it, everyone said it, and I'd never questioned it.

What was that called, social tradition? Indoctrination?

My train of thought was pulled back when she continued to speak. "Changing so suddenly, I'm not sure if I should protect you more or less." She gave a weak smile. "It's just, I don't want to deprive you of important experiences. Klein-san would definitely try his best to protect us, no matter what. He's that kind of guy, I know you can tell too. That why, even if it was mostly a joke... If it had to be anyone, I would feel reassured if it was him, because I know he wouldn't hurt you."

I stood there for a few seconds, mouth hanging open. She'd really put way more thought into that than I'd ever imagined. I'd thought she was just teasing me! Shaking my head slightly, I closed my mouth and tried to form a coherent response.

A minute or two passed, the sun beginning to dip below the edge of the floor. Like gears skipping over one another, I just couldn't form any sort of answer, comment, anything. I needed more time just to process what Onee-chan had told me.

A soft pressure on my hand drew me out of my churning thoughts. I looked down, finding an identical set of fingers intertwined with my own. "Let's just go for now. We have a dragon to slay. You don't have to answer until you're ready."

I gulped to clear my throat. "Un," nodded. We stepped back, then took a running leap off the platform, falling hand-in-hand toward the darkening city streets.

_Author Note: Wow, she always seems to come out with the craziest speeches when I really didn't have anything like that in mind! O_O_

_Also, big thanks(I think) to my betas, who were all over this chapter... prntscr dot com /1dddgm_

_Also also, I set up an irc channel if anyone wants to talk about the story. It's #deathgame on rizon._


	178. Chapter 165

**Sandwich**** Chapter 165**

_Author Note: Ok, attempting to get over a 4-day bout of extreme laziness by at least starting to write this chapter... T-T_

_Also, a retcon: The eighth floor's main town, __Nemia, is now (read: has always been) Friben. Also, the twentieth floor should have been a forest, but there's no way I can remake a castle into a forest, so I'll just leave it._

Grasslands stretched off far into the distance, a number of lakes the only thing to break it up. It was mid-afternoon, the sun nowhere to be seen- from the twenty-second floor anyway. It was June tenth and the last floor's Boss Raid had finished just a few hours prior, ending with the defeat of 『The Flaying Shrike』 and the death of two frontliners. I'd known one by name, though just from hearing it in passing. Unfortunately, that was one of the better numbers we'd been getting lately as the floor's grew progressively more difficult. Most of the time it was more like three or four.

Currently, we were walking with a rather large group, composed of various frontliners along with a number of the 'puzzle solvers' the ones who weren't willing to throw their lives away fighting, but still wanted to help conquer the dungeons, and actually had the smarts to do it.

As for us, we were just traveling along because in the last four hours, not a single mob had been spotted in the fields outside the floor's housing city, «Coral Village». The group was headed across the field, winding between lakes on their way toward the next tower. Given the apparent calm on this floor, they were hoping to clear it quickly and move on.

Since there weren't any field mobs, we were traveling along to get a shot at the dungeon once it opened. It took a while to cross all the way from the East end of the floor somewhere near the center, but we couldn't do anything about that, so we just followed along. To pass the time, I took note of the people present. The puzzle solvers were there obviously. Then there was Kibaou, most likely for the same reason as us. Asuna, and Agil too. As best I could remember, Klein was on a lower floor farming for mats with his guild. Kirito was strangely missing. That's right, hadn't Klein mentioned something about that? I really hadn't seen him in a while...

With my thoughts trailing off for a while, I thought back. When was the last time we'd seen him anyway? That's right, we'd met him back when we were looking for those mats to reforge our swords and he'd sold us a rare ingot. I couldn't really recall anything besides that though. Oh well, I shrugged it off, thinking, if it's him, it will be fine.

When we finally arrived at the base of the tower, finding the dungeon entrance was just as easy as everything else on this floor seemed to be. We just circled around a little ways and found a huge door, exactly what we were searching for. They got to work on the door, the puzzle here being a series of levers which operated some sort of mechanism.

There were no mobs to fight, nothing to defend against. It was a sunny day(we'd long become used to the indirect sunlight), a gentle breeze even blow over the rolling plains. It was an absolutely beautiful day and even the battle hardened frontliners sat down, stretching out on the lush green grass.

It was like the tension just drained out of everyone. For a little while, these people who never did anything but work incessantly toward the next floor sat in the grass, felt the breeze, and actually relaxed.

We weren't sitting far from Asuna, her cloak hood pulled up as if in defiance of the nice weather. As we sat, the wind died down momentarily. Right then, there was a random lull in the surrounding conversations, no wind, no sound to be heard. It was just quiet.

At that moment, Asuna's stomach grumbled.

Even under her hood, I could see the mortified expression that spread over her face when a number of people looked in her direction, searching for the source of the sound. Asuna sank toward the ground, pulling her knees up to her chest and opening her menu. She scanned down the invisible interface, most likely searching for some food.

Then she sighed and dismissed the window. Did she not have any food with her? Sliding toward her, I retrieved a cheap piece of bread from our inventory. It was all we had, but I knew that when you were really hungry anything would do. "Asuna-san, here." I offered the bread.

Her eyes traveled from the bread to me, then back to the bread, as if she wasn't sure if she should take it or not. "Don't worry, I have another five hundred thirty-five of them," I chuckled. I wasn't kidding, we knew what it was like to go without food and we were not about to do it again. _Ever._ We kept enough on us for three months at any given time.

Hearing something as ridiculous as that, Asuna didn't hesitate to take the hard roll. It only cost a single Col anyway. Sitting there, the hooded girl slowly bit into the roll, tearing a bit off with obvious effort. She chewed it slowly, then swallowed. She repeated the process a few times, ever so slowly reducing the size of the small roll. Did she always eat so slowly? How did she manage to organize all the frontliners if it took that long to eat a roll?

"Ugh, I've always hated those," Agil commented, sliding himself over near us, Onee-chan coming as well to form into a little circle. He opened his inventory and pulled out something. It took me a moment to realize it was a sandwich, or a wrap anyway. It had various sandwich-looking ingredients wrapped up in a tortilla. I'd never seen NPC food that looked like that, so it was probably made by an actual person.

Although, even if it looked that way, there was no telling how it actually tasted. The appearance didn't seem to have any effect on the taste of food, as far as I'd seen at least. Then again, I'd never managed to get anything good from the various cooks we'd bought food from. Hadn't one of them even sold us soup that tasted like tropical fruit? Just the thinking about it made me shudder.

"Here, try this, Asuna," Agil offered the wrap and Asuna shrunk away, holding up the tiny roll as if to shield herself from the sandwich. "What's wrong?"

"That's player-made food, that must have cost a lot! There's no way I could accept it!" she squeaked out with much more fervor than there could be any reason for.

"No problem, I didn't buy it." At that point, he puffed out his chest, "I made it myself!" All turning back to him, we stared, dumbfounded. We may as well have had 'Agil can cook?!' written across our faces. "Haha, you've always gotta remember, when you're thrown into a crazy situation, a man has to be able to cook for himself, one of the most important rules of survival.

We continued to stare. At least until Asuna took the sandwich. Placing the hard roll on her lap, not the slightest bit worried about getting her dark red cloak dirty, she looked at the sandwich for a few seconds. Her gaze hardened as she looked at it, as if it would reveal the all the secrets of the universe if she just stared hard enough.

Nearly a minute passed like that, before Agil mumbled, "Oi, are you actually going to eat it or..."

That did the trick. "Ah, right, eating it..." Asuna mumbled anxiously. She moved her head forward slowly, holding the wrap with both hands and cautiously biting down on the corner of it. Her mouth stayed there, as if she was frozen.

Agil started apologising when Asuna stayed frozen. "Well, I'm still pretty new so if it's not that goo-" However, most of the way through his apology, she sprung back to life, the whole sandwich disappearing into her mouth with three incredibly fast bites. We all sat there, staring into the spot the sandwich had just been. Did she even chew that?

After a few more moments, Asuna let out a sullen sigh, her face falling as if the sandwich had made her even more depressed than the bread. "You know, if you really like food that much, you could pick up the cooking skill too, Asuna," Agil commented. Her head snapped back to stare him in the eyes.

"How could I ever do that? I need more combat skills! More ways to fight my way to the top of this prison. More ways to escape from here. More ways back to the real world..." Even as she spoke, her voice grew quiet and she stared down at her empty hands. "The food isn't real. Why would waste my time cooking? If I have the time to cook, I have time to clear the dungeon." She looked away from us, still mumbling more to herself than anyone else, "There's nothing good in this world, it's all fake. Every last bit of it."

Hearing her say that, I knew she couldn't be farther from the truth. Everything that happened here was as good as real, as long as it affected us the same way as on Earth. But there was no way to tell Asuna that, not in the state she was in at least.

Shortly after that, they finished opening the dungeon gates, allowing most of the frontliners to go inside while a few escorted the lower level new guys back to town, even if there weren't any mobs in the field on the way out, there was no need to be reckless.

Walking a short distance into the stone walled structure, we came to a fork and chose the opposite direction as Asuna and Agil. "I guess it's goodbye for now," Agil noted as we began to turn back. He raised a hand and continued on. Asuna looked back at us for a few moments, finally turning away again.

"Cooking..." her mumble came so soft I couldn't be sure I even heard her right.

Staring off after her, I thought, I wonder if even Asuna can come to like this world, even a just little bit?

Turning back to walk down the corridor, I suddenly heard a loud click and looked down.

_All credit for the last bit goes to Quickshot. XD  
_


	179. Chapter 166

**June 12**** Chapter 166**

I hopped backward, not even phased as the floor boss threw itself at me. A few others charged past, members of The Force judging by their guild tags. They slammed into it with shields raised and beat it back briefly.

We were running a quick scouting battle against the twenty-second floor's boss and frankly... it sucked. If we'd come with the intent to kill, we probably could have finished it right there. No one knew why, but this floor was pathetically easy, through and through. We'd gotten here on the tenth, opening the dungeon the very same day. On the eleventh, we cleared every single level of the fifteen floor dungeon, slaughtering our way through the mere handful of mobs which actually populated it.

Today we were running the scouting battle, to discover, yes, 『The Crash Pincer』 was just as easy as the rest of this floor had made us believe it would be. It was a giant crab, of all things, which repeatedly threw itself at us. Sideways.

In fact, the expressions on most of the Clearer's faces looked insulted. Though I didn't much care, I could understand the feeling. Here we were, risking our lives day in and day out to clear these floors, and Kayaba decides to throw a giant crab at us.

…

The scouting battle ended promptly, just a few minutes long, when we drained the first of the crab's four health bars. It didn't change its method of attack, still lashing out with its pincers and attempting those god-awful ramming attacks. At that point, we all backed off, leaving the Boss Room and heading for the exit. Tomorrow's Boss Raid would be a cakewalk. All the better, the higher the floor, the more experience the mobs would give and the faster we could level up to fight 『Morgram』.

Klein walked a short distance off on the left with his guild, Asuna on the right. While most faces still displayed a bit of anger, Asuna seemed to be positively glowing.

"Hey-" both of us started at the same time, to each other. In a moment, the thought passed between us. She wanted to talk to Klein, I wanted to talk to Asuna. We both nodded and split toward the two very different frontliners.

I made a small effort to shut out whatever Onee-chan was about to talk to Klein about. Part of me didn't really want to have much to do with him at the moment, I still hadn't come up with any sort of answer to Onee-chan's earlier question.

Well, part of the problem was that I wasn't even sure how much of it was a question. What did she want to know exactly? I hadn't worked up the nerve to ask precisely what she was trying to ask, whether it be if I wanted to... get closer to Klein... or something, or... I wasn't even sure what else she may have been asking. Whatever the case, she hadn't pressed the issue.

But currently, my other reason for blocking off the connection was simply to keep from getting distracted by whatever she was talking about. And seeing. And hearing.

It was weird, it didn't usually become a problem since we were always together and experienced much the same things, but if we split apart, her sensory could get jumbled with my own pretty easily.

Right now I didn't want to bother wading through two sets of senses while holding a conversation, so I focused on tuning her out, something which I hadn't had much practice at. It was rather difficult, probably more so than it should have been, but I managed it fine.

"Hey, Asuna," I started conversationally, "you look strangely happy today."

"Strangely happy?" she asked pointedly while I waved my hands back and forth.

"That's not what I meant. Well, ok, maybe it is... somewhat!" I cringed as she leaned in like an animal stalking prey. "Anyway, you look much more happy today- _than you usually look_." I put emphasis on the end to clarify. "Did something good happen?"

"A,ah!" She seemed to choke out a strange sound for a moment before turning away quickly. "I'm really glad that the Boss is so easy!" Was that cheer in her voice fake? "We can pass this floor quickly. That's a few more days saved that we will get to spend in the real world once we escape!"

Despite her happy words, they sounded rather awkward, as if she just didn't mean them. Even though I knew she did. That was exactly the kind of thing that would make her glowingly happy. So... why wasn't it? More importantly, if not that, then what?

As I was trying to consider what else in the world could possibly make the cloaked leader of the clearing group at all happy, I noticed something moving in the distance.

My eyes didn't even have to adjust their focus. I just looked at ahead, taking in the minute details available which no one else could possibly see so far away. Black coat, black hair. I didn't even have to note the sword on his back before I recognized the soloer, Kirito.

As he approached closer, others noticed, some ignoring him, others openly making sounds of disgust. Even if we were with the frontliners right now, we were sort of outcasts ourselves, so I only hesitated briefly before raising a hand in greeting.

My hand hung there, half raised, as a palpable aura of doom and despair seemed to wash over the whole area. Without realizing it, I stepped aside to allow Kirito past, my words of greeting stuck in my throat. His shoulders slumped in a defeated posture, his face hung low so his bangs covered his eyes. For some reason I couldn't understand, I was quietly grateful that I couldn't see the look in them at the time.

The rest of the clearing group present split down the middle, allowing the single boy through without question or comment. After he passed, an aura of gloom so heavy it was practically visible covering him, everyone stared back for nearly a minute as he trudged into the setting sun.

Eventually, someone managed to clear their throat loudly, snapping everyone out of the communal stupor. We all began walking again, many of the people loudly insulting and defaming Kirito, probably to cover their own uneasiness after... whatever it was that just happened. Beside me Asuna had somehow grown even more quiet and closed off than usual, if that was even possible.

—We'll have to... ask Kirito-san about it... later... sometime, I thought to Onee-chan hesitantly.

I had no intention of asking him. Ever.

_Author Note: Dun dun dun dun!_


	180. Chapter 167

**Catching****Up****Chapter**** 167**

"That should be everything in this area." I returned my sword to its sheathe, dagger following a moment later. We were farming for mats a few floors below the frontline, the twenty-third floor which had opened almost a week ago. The difficulty had picked back up somewhat, but the clearing rate was still pretty good. We'd probably break through to the next floor in just a couple more days.

After buying some information on good mats, we'd descended to the lower floors to collect them. Seeing how we'd already raised our levels to thirty-six and our equipment was losing its potency, it was time for a new set. We even had twenty-four points set aside from leveling up to take care of the new strength requirement so we would be able to wield our new weapons once we created them.

On our list of materials to gather, we had 『Ceramic Plate, Strangling Moss, Hollow Bone, Blaze Talon, and Refined Chrystalite.』 The first two increased damage and durability, while the second two decreased the weight so we wouldn't end up with terribly heavy weapons that required us to put a ton of points into Strength.

It was annoying, because our swords were so durable we always had to find ways to decrease the weight so we could maintain our high AGI build. Well, it was probably also due to Onee-chan always producing swords of such high quality that they were meant for people five or ten levels above us.

The final ingredient was a higher grade version of the one we had originally used for Asuna's rapier, a special ingredient to empower the weapon with special abilities. They were rare and difficult to obtain, the only place Argo had heard of them dropping was from a certain type of golem which could be found on one of the far out of the way platforms that made up the twenty-first floor. Besides that, it wasn't very difficult. We'd already collected the first three ingredients after all.

We were on our way back to the «Ralback Teleport Gate» on the nineteenth floor. The whole place was covered in dark mists and dead trees, with sharp-sloped hills all over the place. Even with this kind of atmosphere, I definitely prefered hunting the huge «Monstrous Raptor» (which paradoxically dropped Hollow Bones) than our previous prey, «Stranglethorns». Just thinking about the plant-type monsters sent a small shiver up my spine.

Our next targets were «Lava Chasers». Why they dropped talons had yet to be seen, but their names at least covered the Flame part. The mobs inhabited the eighteenth floor, a vast desert from end to end. As we approached the town, I could feel my enthusiasm draining away. After the plant mobs, now we were heading to a desert floor. _Wonderful_.

Arriving in a flash of blue light, the oppressive heat was the first thing I felt, beating down on me from all sides. "Ugh," I grumbled as we both glanced around, looking up to get our bearings.

"Hey, it's you two!" a strangely familiar voice came from behind us at a shout, even though he sounded like he was no more than a meter away. He didn't sound terribly happy to see us. Turning to face the man, my eyes shot wide when I found myself face to face with Kurenai.

Wait, no, his name is Crimson here, I reminded myself while trying to pick my jaw up off the ground. "So what are you two doing here, five floors below the frontline?" he asked pointedly. Even though he said it that way, as if we would be disturbing the lower levels by coming here, not only was five floors not very far down, but this floor was always deserted to begin with. I bet we could set off a bomb in the town square (if that kind of thing existed anyway) and no one would even notice.

"We're just here farming mats to upgrade our weapons," Onee-chan explained simply.

"Then you don't mind if I come along, do you?" Crimson's voice made it clear that giving a 'yes' was our only option here.

While Onee-chan nodded her head, I tried to remember just what had happened with him the last time. The baking heat was making it hard to think straight. It took a few moments to dredge up the memory. We'd been working on the lower levels to help train some of the soldiers. That was when we'd been attacked by the PKing guild the Laughing Coffin. We'd had to take advantage of some glitches to get away, marking us as Cheaters in Crimson's eyes. We'd been lucky that he agreed to keep our secret so far, though he clearly didn't like us any more for it.

On the one hand, it was strange, he was a friend I'd known for years. And yet here he was, sounding like a complete stranger. Actually, he'd been in here as long as us. By now, he might really be a different person, this place could change people. I should know. I glanced down a little as I thought that.

After adding Crimson to our party, we made our way out to the Western section of the floor where the mobs could be found, traveling a good deal slower than usual with our tagalong.

Thankfully, it didn't take long to find the «Lava Chasers». Seeing them, it was pretty obvious why they would drop the Blaze Talons we were looking for. The mobs were red, dragons by the look of them, but tiny. They were all wrapped around these spheres, floating about head height off the ground. Their small talons latched onto the glowing orbs as they floated around.

"We just need to kill a few of these," Onee-chan said as we approached a group of them. We all drew our weapons. While Crimson approached carefully, his level probably closer to matching the enemies, we charged straight in. The «Lava Chasers» spit balls of fire at us, but it was way too slow. By the time they'd responded, most of them had already been cut down. Just a few more moments and the last few followed as we weaved through incoming barrages of fire.

We didn't even have to check our inventory to know that we'd collected more than enough of the ingredient. Turning on a heel, we easily began to head back. "Wait, that's it?" Crimson asked from behind.

"Yeah, we only needed a couple of the drops, so we have enough from just that," Onee-chan said.

"What have you two been up to since last time?" Crimson asked as we walked back toward town. We both hesitated before answering. We hadn't done too much, but surely he wouldn't care to hear about how we were responsible for the top ranking captain of the guild dying... Still, it's not like we could lie to him and face the possibility of him calling us on it.

"Well, we've been clearing on the frontlines for a little while now, but before that we were involved with a botched attempt to fight a field boss. The captain Kains came with some guild members to fight a powerful field boss with us, but it was stronger than he thought and he died shortly before we finished the boss," she tweaked the last bit to avoid further explanations.

"I see..." he thought about it for a few minutes while we walked in silence. Despite the outcome, she'd managed to word it in a way that didn't make it sound like it was all our fault, so he probably wouldn't decide that it was a good reason to tell everyone we were cheating. Not as long as we continued to be helpful on the frontline.

We arrived back in «Mekrino» a short while later, walking into the main plaza. Standing in front of the «Teleport Gate», Crimson left our party, saying he had things to do on this floor and promptly walked off. As he left the empty plaza behind, I sighed. Why had things wound up like this anyway? He was my friend before, so why did we have to have this horrible, antagonistic relationship?

Still, there was nothing for it. I'd started all of it by not revealing who I really was when we first met.

I sighed again. "Teleport: «Relaghn»." The burning heat vanished, but my distraught mood wasn't nearly so easy to leave behind.


End file.
